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Indonesia’s national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia’s subsidiary Garuda Maintenance Facility (GMF) AeroAsia, has inaugurated the biggest narrow body hangar in the world, Hangar 4, at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta.

The facility has the maintenance capacity of up to 16 narrow body aircraft, including one bay for aircraft painting.

Garuda president M Arif Wibowo said: "By the year 2020, the Garuda Indonesia Group will eventually operate a total of 241 aircraft.

"Hangar 4 is a strategic initiative of GMF AeroAsia in seizing a large portion of the narrow body aircraft maintenance market in Asia Pacific, which is forecast to become market leader in the MRO business, and furthermore, becoming a market leader for the largest aircraft maintenance business over the next five years."

Garuda opened the new facility as part of its business expansion programme.

"Hangar 4 is a strategic initiative of GMF AeroAsia in seizing a large portion of the narrow body aircraft maintenance market in Asia Pacific."

GMF AeroAsia president Richard Budihadianto said: "The unique design of Hangar 4 is evidenced by the implementation of an eco-friendly concept.

"This eco-friendly building concept is GMF’s responsibility to the Earth. This concept is contained in the special construction of the hangar, such as skylights on the roof and panasap glass on the walls of the hangar to help optimise natural sunlight.

"Currently, the income of the capacity of the existing narrow body hangar is equal to $57m, so with this new hangar, in 2018, GMF’s revenue is projected to rise to $143m."

To give it a modern and transparent look, the hangar has a curtain wall with laminated glass to maximise the circulation of light.

It also has aluminum ceilings to minimise air turbulence and the roof has been designed to allow water to drain easily. In order to create white light and reduce electricity consumption, Hangar 4 uses a metal halide lamp.

It was constructed by local workers in a 66,940m² area, where 64,000m² is available for a production area and 17,600m² is dedicated office space.

GMF’s Hangar 4 will be fully operational in 2018.

GMF currently has 167 maintenance projects for narrow body aircraft, which is expected to increase from 167 to 313 projects by 2018.

Image: The construction of GMF Hangar 4 has been completed at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta. Photo: courtsey of ACN Newswire.