Fractional supply chain and technical operations support for African airlines.
Zalabo Aviation Services is a hands-on specialist consultancy for airline maintenance and technical operations — we help maintenance and engineering leaders reduce AOG exposure, component cost and turnaround time, and we run the shared services that deliver it. We work as an extension of your own Technical Operations department — the sourcing, repair, logistics and settlement capacity of a large engineering organisation, taken fractionally, at the scale your fleet actually needs.
Start a conversationThe problem
West African airlines operate in one of the hardest supply environments in commercial aviation — with some of the thinnest internal teams to absorb it.
When an aircraft is on the ground, every hour is revenue lost and schedule integrity at risk — yet a small fleet has no bench of serviceable material to draw on when a component fails.
Rotables and components are sourced one urgent order at a time, at spot prices, with long lead times from distant suppliers and little negotiating leverage.
Parts are priced in hard currency while revenue is earned in naira. Exchange-rate movement between order and payment turns maintenance budgeting into guesswork.
Technical records, airworthiness documentation and compliance work are unforgiving and continuous — and they land on the same small team that keeps aircraft flying.
What we do
Zalabo Aviation Services is a consultancy that works hands on. We diagnose inside your own operation — where AOG exposure, component cost and turnaround time are leaking value — and then we do the work: operating the shared services that fix it. Advice that stays advice is not the product; the four services below are.
Pooled access to serviceable rotables and components across the client base, structured AOG response, and disciplined turnaround management — so a failed component is a logistics problem, not a grounded aircraft.
10-day turnaround is the product.
Repair management and exchange management handled end to end, with consolidated AOG logistics and customs coordination — one accountable channel from removal to return to service.
Demand aggregated across our clients and taken to suppliers as one book of business — the leverage no single small fleet can command on its own.
Naira-denominated planning with hedged settlement, so the cost of parts stops whipsawing with the exchange rate and maintenance budgets hold through the year.
How it works
Client airlines pool their demand and their serviceable material through the practice. The pool runs on a consignment-first basis: clients keep title to their own parts at all times, and Zalabo Aviation Services administers the pool — including administering clients' participation in the IATP pooling framework.
Every engagement begins with a paid diagnostic pilot — a bounded piece of real work on your own fleet's data, so the case for the engagement is proven on evidence, not promised.
Clients then engage on a monthly retainer covering the four services — availability, execution, orchestrated purchasing and FX-hedged settlement — run as a standing operation.
A success fee is charged only on audited, verified savings. If we do not produce measurable savings, there is no success fee to pay.
The market
West Africa's active fleet is concentrated enough for pooled supply arrangements to work — and fragmented enough across individual operators that no single small fleet reaches efficient scale alone. Common fleet types deepen the pool further: the Embraer ERJ-145 fleet, operated across the region, is a headline pooling type, where shared rotable coverage can serve several operators at once.
On the horizon
Beyond the consulting practice, a component repair capability is being built in Lagos: the Extension Lab, planned to launch in January 2029 with lean test and repair benches. It is a future capability, not a current service — the hands-on consulting comes first, and the repair operation is built on the demand it proves.
About
Zalabo Aviation Services is a hands-on specialist consultancy for airline maintenance and technical operations — founder-led, focused on Lagos and West Africa, and deliberately not a general advisory firm: we diagnose, and then we operate what we recommend. It exists for one reason: the region's airlines deserve the supply chain and technical operations depth that large carriers build in-house — delivered fractionally, by people who have done the work themselves, and measured on the savings and availability it produces.
Contact
Every engagement begins with a conversation about your fleet, your exposure and where your supply chain is costing you aircraft time. Reach us through our LinkedIn company page.
Start a conversation