Aerostar (Hall 3 Stand B31) has become one of the first independent European MRO organizations to install Split Scimitar winglets on Boeing 737-800s. The work was carried out for Sweden’s TUIFly Nordic at Aerostar’s Bacau facility in Romania, which is also the location of its headquarters. The winglets were fitted to two 737 aircraft, one arriving in early May and having the work done during a maintenance check, while the other followed shortly afterwards for a maintenance check, wing strengthening and installation of winglets.

Each installation took six days and “had no impact on the maintenance check downtime,” said Aerostar (see page XX). Ovidiu Buhai, director aviation MRO and upgrades for Aerostar, said, “We are very proud that Aerostar was chosen by an airline within [the] TUI Travel [group]…to install these revolutionary winglets.

TUI Travel is the European launch customer for the Split Scimitar winglets. It placed an order with Aviation Partners Boeing in July 2013 for the fuel- and emissions-saving winglet.

TUI Travel was also the first customer to fly Blended Winglets on its Boeing 737 Next Generation fleet. The Split Scimitar winglet was the culmination of a five-year design effort by Aviation Partners Boeing, which used the latest computational fluid dynamic technology to redefine the aerodynamics of the Blended Winglet into an all-new “Split Scimitar” winglet.

The new winglet uses the existing Blended Winglet structure but adds new strengthened spars, aerodynamic scimitar tips and a large ventral fin.