BIG MOVES AT MAREEBA

Story and photos by Kerry Hastie

For 40 years, MAF’s heavy maintenance facility that served the Asia/Pacific region was located in Ballarat, Victoria. It was moved to Mareeba in 2003 in order to be closer to field operations. At the time, this was thought of as a temporary measure. Now, after almost two decades, MAF Mareeba is relocating and rebuilding on the other side of the airport. Mareeba, in Far North Queensland, is ideally situated to serve the needs of Arnhem Land, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. It is equipped to provide major overhauls, repairs, modifications, repaints, avionics upgrades, stores support and more. The plan is to build with a view to the future, ensuring that there is room for expansion as MAF in Mareeba grows. This new base will set us up for decades to come, drastically improving our ability to service aircraft efficiently, train new engineers and lower our operating costs. The first hangar, which is designated as our main maintenance hangar, was completed on schedule in December 2021. We spent the first two weeks of January shifting in our stores, engineering and office equipment and it was ready for work by the 20 January. Due to its increase in size and layout, it gives much greater ability to have more aircraft being worked on at once. We now have all the equipment used for aircraft maintenance housed in one area, as opposed to the old hangar where equipment was spread over many different rooms due to lack of size. Bigger dedicated avionics workshop greatly increases our ability to work on more and new varieties of avionics work. We now have a dedicated training room where we can produce our own training videos. This not only benefits Mareeba, but these training videos can be used all over MAFI maintenance bases worldwide.

The second hangar is due to be completed by the end of April 2022. This will house our new state of the art aircraft paint shop with additional office space upstairs—a major upgrade from what we had at our old hangar paint shop! We will now be able to paint aircraft like our Cessna 208s without having to remove the wings due to the size restrictions previously imposed on us at the old hangar. It will be much safer to work with extractor fans and air filtration, which provide a dedicated fresh air supply to the painters. There will also be a new office space upstairs allowing more administrative staff to be housed at Mareeba as well as providing

Opposite page: Kerry, right, at work in the new hangar, pictured above. Kerry with his wife, Marie, and sons Jesse and Ethan. Johanna not shown.

room for non-Mareeba staff to have a workstation to use when needed.

But wait, there’s more ... The land on which the hangars are built is leased from the council. But in addition, 13 acres has been generously donated to MAF only 150 meters from the hangars. This land will be used to build accommodation for students and pilots here on training, office space for administrative staff from both the hangar and Flight Training Centre, a conference centre and training buildings for both flight and engineering! The MAFI CEO and Board want to see Mareeba as a “Centre of Excellence” for both engineering and flight training. The investment in these new hangars and the future building of the new Flight Training Centre, are steps towards this. Investing in training, equipment and additional administrative support is seen as a priority. Beyond allowing MAF to keep in step with regulatory requirements, it will set us up for the growth in training requirements needed to sustain us into the future.

About Kerry

I left New Zealand in 2016 with my wife Marie and our three children, Jesse, Ethan and Johanna. I am the Safety and Quality manager for the Part145 maintenance certificate, which covers all maintenance work carried out at Mareeba, Gove and Timor-Leste.

My current role is divided into two areas. On the Quality side, I carry out audits and compare what we say we will do with what we are doing. If any differences are noted, the chief engineers, engineering team and I work together to look for the most effective corrective actions.

For my Safety Manager’s role, I look after our safety reporting program, investigating incidents when needed. I collate information on potential unhealthy trends so MAF can focus on areas of improvement. As a result, people go home safe! MAF also saves money from stopping any potential incidents from even occurring. We call this continuous improvement. I have been seeing improvements year on year, both in the quality of workmanship and all-round safety, which makes the job all worthwhile!