The interior retrofit shop has been rather busy of late with its parent EVA Air's cabin interior upgrade program for its Premium Laurel business-class product offering with flat-bed modular seats.

How does the relationship with your sister company EVA Air work? How independent are you?

Besides being a majority shareholder, EVA Air is a notable customer of EGAT. EGAT provides a comprehensive total service solution to EVA Air and is committed to delivering technical excellence to it and its portfolio of airline partners. In a manner similar to all its customer-partners, charges and pricing for each service delivery and request to EVA Air are negotiated and contractually bound.

That said, 70% of the business at EGAT is derived from other airline partners from Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East, to whom it offers a similar, all-encompassing maintenance service package. Its current customer-partners take on selective segments of this comprehensive service package.

Where do you source your engineering talent from?

EGAT nurtures its engineering talent inhouse. Trained technicians with engineering backgrounds from the production line who exhibit an aptitude for understanding engineering drawings and diagrams are hand-picked to be trained as engineers.

EGAT is deliberately absent from both development of design engineers, as well as from acquisition of engineering design houses. Instead, EGAT focuses on building effective liaison engineering skills among its engineers, in coordination with the original equipment manufacturerers.

EGAT's extensive in-house knowledge repository accumulates technical know-how from aircraft ramp and major maintenance, significant modifications and fleet management, and also assists in engineer development.

What is Taiwan doing to ensure there is enough local talent to support the MRO industry?