Fleet Care Program at Memmingen (Allgäu Airport) (EDJA)

Why choose a fleet program rather than booking individual visits?

Recurring work suits the rhythm of a flight department better than one-off callouts. When you know an aircraft will overnight at Memmingen every second Thursday or return from a charter series on the last Friday of the month, locking those slots into a rolling calendar means the detailing crew is already rostered, equipment is on the apron and the handler expects us. You avoid the back-and-forth of availability checks, and we avoid the inefficiency of cold-calling contractors every time a cabin needs a deep clean.

The twelve-month structure also smooths budgeting. A fixed monthly fee per tail number covers the agreed service mix—quick turns, interiors, exteriors, brightwork—so finance sees a predictable line rather than spiky invoices. If the flying pattern changes mid-year, we adjust the calendar at the quarterly review; the program renews automatically unless you choose to pause or re-scope it.

Finally, continuity matters for appearance. The same crew learns your cabin materials, your OEM finish schedules, the stone-chip patterns on your nacelles. Service history and photos travel with the aircraft, so when a customer queries a scuff or you're preparing for pre-purchase inspection, the record is already documented.

What changes at Memmingen (Allgäu Airport) that affect exterior and cabin work?

Memmingen sits at 633 metres elevation in the Allgäu foothills, one of the highest commercial airports in Germany, so winter arrives earlier and lingers longer than at low-altitude fields. Expect a de-icing season that stretches exterior-detailing windows: a dry wash or single-stage polish scheduled for November may need to wait until the stand is clear of frost and the aircraft skin is above freezing. We build weather contingencies into the fleet calendar and will propose interior-only visits when conditions rule out paint work.

Operating hours run 06:00–22:00 local, with a PPR-only extension to 23:00 for delayed flights; the airport is closed overnight. That daytime window works well for scheduled maintenance overnight elsewhere, but any detailing at Memmingen must finish before the curfew or move to the next available morning slot. The single runway—06/24, 2,630 metres—handles both the low-cost passenger traffic and general aviation on Apron 3 to the south; business aircraft are driven directly to the main terminal's Gate 1 for VIP passengers, so cabin work often happens on stand rather than in a hangar.

Ground handling is provided by ALLgate, the airport's wholly owned subsidiary, which also arranges airside access for contractors. There is no independent FBO, so our escort and GPU requests go through the airport operations desk. Memmingen is Level 2 schedules-facilitated, not fully coordinated, but AC-U-KWIK flags it as requiring slots; we confirm arrival times with the airport when we lock in the service calendar to avoid surprises on the day.

How does the service calendar fit around flight operations?

We start by mapping your typical monthly pattern: home-base overnights, turnarounds between charter legs, gaps after long-haul positioning flights when the cabin has been lived in for twelve hours. Quick turns—rinseless exterior, vacuum, galley wipe-down—slot into short ground times; monthly interiors and seasonal exteriors go into longer weather windows or planned down days. The calendar lives in a shared document, visible to your ops team and ours, so schedule changes propagate automatically.

Priority crew allocation means that when an aircraft diverts to Memmingen with a hydraulic-fluid belly stain or a passenger spills red wine an hour before the owner boards, the AOG call jumps the queue. We hold buffer capacity inside the fleet program precisely for these requests; you're not competing with walk-in work because the crew and materials are already ringfenced. Turnaround on an AOG interior is typically four to six hours if the aircraft is accessible and the stand has GPU; exterior decon can often happen in parallel if daylight and temperature allow.

What does the fixed monthly budget cover, and what sits outside it?

The monthly fee per tail number includes the service mix agreed at contract signature: for example, two quick turns, one full interior and one exterior wash per month, plus quarterly brightwork polishing. Consumables—cleaning chemistry, microfibre, polish—are built into the price, as are crew travel to Memmingen, airside-escort fees and routine photos. The quarterly appearance review with your operations team is also included, so there's no separate consultancy charge for planning.

AOG callouts are covered for priority access and crew allocation, but if an AOG job requires specialist materials—say, a leather colour-match repair or a deep decon after a biohazard event—those materials are invoiced separately at cost. Similarly, if you add an aircraft mid-contract or request an out-of-scope service such as a full multi-stage correction detail, we'll quote it as a programme supplement rather than stretch the monthly budget to cover work it was never sized for.

The twelve-month commitment gives you the preferential rate; shorter contracts or ad-hoc work would price higher because we can't amortise mobilisation and training costs. If flying drops and you want to pause a tail number for a quarter, we'll freeze that portion of the fee and restart when operations resume, but the slot in the calendar may not be held if demand from other programme aircraft fills it.

Who manages airside access and coordination with the handler at Memmingen?

All ground handling at EDJA flows through ALLgate, the airport's subsidiary, which also controls airside access for third-party contractors. We apply for annual airside passes for our crew and vehicle, renewed with each programme cycle, and the airport operations desk ([email protected]) coordinates escort when required. Because Memmingen has no independent FBO, the relationship is directly with the airport rather than a handling agent, which simplifies communication but means lead times for access approvals can be a few days longer than at fields with competing handlers.

When an aircraft is on stand, we coordinate GPU supply, tow if the belly or gear bays need access away from passenger aprons, and waste-water disposal if we're doing a full galley and lav detail. ALLgate's airline-interior-cleaning team works the passenger fleet, so they understand the logistics; we simply book the slot, confirm the stand number and arrive with our own kit. For cabin work requiring no-touch avionics and static-port protection, we brief ALLgate's ramp staff on our no-go zones so that parallel refuelling or towing doesn't disturb covers or cleaning boundaries.

How does the quarterly appearance review keep the programme aligned with operations?

Every three months we sit down—physically at Memmingen or on a video call—with your ops manager or chief pilot to walk through service history, compare the calendar against actual flying and adjust the mix for the next quarter. If winter weather pushed three exterior washes into spring, we'll add capacity in April and May; if a new charter contract means more quick turns and fewer deep interiors, we rebalance the monthly allocation. The review also covers any paint or cabin issues flagged in the service photos: stone chips accumulating on the nose, a seam lifting in the galley veneer, brightwork oxidation that suggests moving from annual to six-monthly polishing.

The session is documented in a short report with annotated photos, which becomes part of the aircraft's appearance record. If you're preparing for audit, pre-purchase inspection or a lease return, that continuity of documentation—showing that leading edges were polished in March, cabin leather was conditioned in June, the belly was deconned after a hydraulic event in September—adds measurable value. It also means that when a new chief pilot or flight-department manager inherits the programme, they have a visual history rather than starting from assumptions.