Paris (France) (AFP) – Europe's largest airline Ryanair signed an agreement with Safran on Tuesday to create its own engine maintenance workshops, a strategic step to secure this key activity in a context of a shortage of new planes and rapidly growing air traffic.

Published on: 02/10/2026 - 5:01 p.m.

Under the multi-year, multi-billion dollar memorandum of understanding, Ryanair will purchase all of its engine parts from CFM, a joint venture between Safran and GE, and will open two maintenance workshops in Europe from 2029.

“For 30 years, CFM has maintained all of Ryanair’s CFM56 engines under a per-flight-hour maintenance contract. From 2029, Ryanair plans to in-house the maintenance of its engines,” said Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive.

The contract aims to support the company's fleet, which is expected to grow to 800 Boeing 737 family aircraft and more than 2,000 engines.

The contract will cover current and future CFM56 and Leap engines powering Ryanair's Boeing 737s.

Maintenance is becoming crucial given the lack of new aircraft on the market which is explained by production delays within Airbus and Boeing, persistent difficulties in supply chains and industrial problems affecting certain engine manufacturers, which are significantly extending delivery times.

Once its workshops are operational and over the entire duration of the contract, Ryanair plans to spend more than $1 billion per year purchasing spare parts directly from CFM.

In case of unforeseen circumstances

For Ryanair, this model will limit price increases, control maintenance times and guarantee the availability of parts.

"There is no doubt that there will be significant cost inflation on new aircraft, on engines and on engine repairs for the next decade, until supply chains begin to smooth out," Michael O'Leary said during a press conference.

Having its own maintenance workshops will make it possible to "limit cost inflation" while engine manufacturers "will only provide around 50% of the capacity for overhauls of their engines" and the maintenance workshops of third-party airlines such as Air France or Lufthansa take care of their own engines, he added.

Another issue: maintenance deadlines. “Any additional day of execution time is costly for the airline” and these delays “have increased due to lack of capacity on a global scale”, for his part underlined Olivier Andriès.

Safran is also expanding its maintenance network in Belgium, India, Mexico and France with an investment of one billion euros.

In the event of an unforeseen event "like the Gulf War, September 11 or Covid", "we will have much better control over the quality of our engine maintenance" thanks to the partnership with CFM and the upstream purchase of spare parts will ensure "a stock to carry out overhauls".

“It is therefore crucial for us to source parts directly from CFM,” Mr O’Leary added.

This agreement marks a new stage in the historic partnership between Ryanair and CFM, which dates back to 1998.

Ryanair operates the world's largest fleet of Boeing aircraft equipped with CFM engines as well as the largest fleet of CFM56 engines in Europe, with more than 400 Boeing 737 NG aircraft.

The airline currently operates more than 200 Boeing 737 max aircraft equipped with Leap engines. Ryanair has also ordered 150 Boeing 737 max with 150 as an option.

© 2026 AFP

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