Gama Aviation and Atkins win contract to conduct airworthiness reviews for RAF.

Friday 5th December 2014

Gama Aviation and Atkins have secured a five year contract to undertake Airworthiness Reviews on behalf of the Royal Air Force which will help to ensure that RAF aircraft are airworthy and fit for deployment whenever they're needed most.

The contract came about following the Military Aviation Authority's July 2013 regulation requiring Continuing Airworthiness Maintenance Organisations to conduct a Baseline Airworthiness Review of every aircraft on the Military Register by 01 July 2015, with an annual Airworthiness Review of each aircraft thereafter.

The Airworthiness Review is used to verify the outputs of the continuing airworthiness management processes and substantiates the airworthiness of an aircraft at the time of review. This gives confidence to aviation Duty Holders that the continuing airworthiness management activities for each aircraft have been carried out and documented correctly.

The Baseline Military Airworthiness Review is used to confirm airworthiness by establishing an aircraft's maintenance history and physical configuration, and the subsequent annual Airworthiness Reviews will focus on any continuing airworthiness management activities conducted on the aircraft since the last review.

Alan Buckland, managing director of Atkins' defence business said: "We are delighted that the RAF has awarded us this important contract."

"Atkins has extensive experience of providing the MOD with airworthiness expertise over many years and has teamed with Gama Aviation to provide the RAF with an exceptional team of aircraft engineers and airworthiness review staff drawn from defence and civil aviation. Our combined resources provide an unparalleled breadth and depth of aircraft engineering and airworthiness assessment experience which will help to ensure that RAF aircraft are airworthy and fit for deployment whenever they're needed most."

The Airworthiness Review contract will last for an initial period of three years with two optional one year extensions. The Gama Aviation and Atkins team have already been mobilised, with delivery of the service now well under way.

About Gama Aviation:

Gama Aviation is a global business aviation services organization, founded in 1983 in the United Kingdom by Marwan Khalek and Stephen Wright. Gama Aviation currently employs over 600 people and operates over 100 business aircraft around the globe at 25 operating bases across four continents.

Gama Aviation's global headquarters are located at Farnborough Airport in the UK, with its American subsidiary, Gama Charters Inc.'s headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut, its Middle East and North Africa headquarters in Sharjah and its Asian headquarters in Hong Kong. Its companies and affiliates hold EU-OPS, FAA and UAE GCAA Charter Certificates, EASA, FAA and GCAA Part 145 Maintenance Approvals, EASA Part 21 Design and Manufacture Approvals and collectively offer business aircraft management, charter, maintenance and design, travel, valeting, FBO Executive Handling and aviation software services.

The group remains majority owned by its founders; in 2007 the group received an equity investment from Growth Gate Capital Corporation, Crescent Enterprises and a small number of other strategic partners.

www.gamaaviation.com

About Atkins:

Atkins (www.atkinsglobal.com) is one of the world's leading design, engineering and project management consultancies*, employing some 18,000 people across the UK, North America, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. Our people's breadth and depth of expertise and drive to ask why has allowed us to plan, design and enable some of the world's most complex and time critical projects.

*15th largest global design firm (Engineering News-Record 2014) and the third largest multidisciplinary consultancy in Europe (Svensk Teknik och Design 2013).

Recent projects from across the Group: 
Atkins is working across urban regeneration, master planning, national energy programmes, major transport schemes, water and environment projects - applying smart design solutions on projects including:

•Doha Central Planning Office - helping to co-ordinate Qatar's National 2030 Vision for world class transport infrastructure, which will bring major benefits to the economy;

•The London 2012 Games infrastructure transformation - as technical advisor to London's boroughs as the Olympic Park moves into its legacy configuration as a follow-on role to our work as the Games' official engineering and design provider;

•UAE's peaceful nuclear new build programme - providing technical assurance to lenders backing the United Arab Emirates' most ambitious energy infrastructure projects;

•North Sea and Gulf of Mexico oil and gas platforms - extending the operational life of critical oil and gas platforms to allow cost-efficient and safe recovery of fuel sources from mature fields;

•SSE offshore wind alliance - provision of expert engineering and design support for the UK's biggest offshore wind alliance with Scottish and Southern Energy;

•Crossrail - designing the Central London twin tunnels and station architecture for Europe's biggest civil engineering scheme which will see tunnels passing beneath 470 listed buildings and critical infrastructure;

•Etihad Railway - providing multidisciplinary design expertise on the 1,200 km Etihad Rail network which will revolutionise passenger and freight transport in the UAE;

•Denmark ERTMS - providing multidisiplinary signalling expertise on the first countrywide installation of an ERTMS train control and management system in Denmark;

•Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge - lead consultant on this integral part of the new Hong Kong link road scheme which will significantly boost land connectivity in the region;

•Lowestoft Sixth Form College - design of the ultralow energy consumption Lowestoft College in the UK which aims to reduce operational energy use by more than 60% compared to previous designs;

•UK National Composites Centre - providing technical expertise to bring the latest lightweight carbon fibre materials to all engineering sectors, helping to develop innovative applications and reduce costs and carbon;

•US Environmental Protection Agency - providing technical assessment and analysis of national water-related resources and ecological systems in North America;

•Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) superfast broadband - providing technical, commercial and procurement support to help deliver superfast broadband to one of Europe's most remote regions.