A Company of Its Own for the Technical Operation
When the airline Tyrolean Airways was absorbed into Austrian Airlines AG on 1 April 2015, the technical maintenance operation at the Innsbruck site initially continued to exist independently: as early as 1 March 2015, it had been spun off into the newly founded Tyrolean Airways Luftfahrzeuge Technik GmbH, known for short as Tyrolean Technik. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Austrian Airlines, the company specialised in maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of turboprop aircraft, above all the Dash 8-400. Services offered included A and C checks, the replacement of engines, propellers and landing gear, transit and pre-flight checks, system fault-finding, and AOG rapid-response support for aircraft grounded unexpectedly, in addition to training and consulting services.
Closer Cooperation with Bratislava
In July 2016, the Austrian Airlines Group announced closer cooperation between Tyrolean Technik and Austrian Technik Bratislava, without any corporate merger of the two operations being planned. As part of this cooperation, Wolfgang Henle, managing director in Bratislava, and Bernd Meyer, managing director in Innsbruck, also each took on management of the other’s company. While Tyrolean Technik continued to focus on line and heavy maintenance of the Dash 8-400, Bratislava covered heavy maintenance of Fokker and Embraer jets. At the time, both sites generated around 60 percent of their revenue from customers outside their own airline group.
The End of the Independent Turboprop Business
Only a few years later came the end for the independent maintenance operation: according to trade press reports, Tyrolean Technik discontinued its turboprop MRO business by the first half of 2018, after 38 years of technical tradition at the Innsbruck site. Declining market volume and rising costs for maintaining the aircraft type were cited as reasons. A central database for aviation companies records 31 July 2018 as the date operations ceased for Tyrolean Technik.
We have no reliable, publicly available sources on the technical activities at Innsbruck Airport after this point, and we deliberately avoid making unsubstantiated claims here; we will update this section once reliable information becomes available. What remains clear is this: Innsbruck’s aviation-technical tradition, built up over decades from the first Dash 7 maintenance in 1980 to the independent MRO operation of the 2010s, is a significant, often overlooked part of Tyrolean Airways’ corporate history.
Sources (Selection)
- Aviation Week: Tyrolean Technik to end turboprop MRO business after 38 years
- aerotelegraph.com: Austrian Technik sites in Bratislava and Innsbruck move closer together
- CAPA/CentreForAviation: Tyrolean Technik company profile
← Merger and the End as an Independent Company (2015) · Back to overview
This chapter is part of the detailed corporate history of Tyrolean Airways. Independent, private history project with no connection to Austrian Airlines AG, the Lufthansa Group or the Swarovski corporate group.