SINGAPORE—The most severe downturn in commercial aviation business in recent years is not stopping Asia’s big maintenance, repair and overhaul businesses from expanding. But they are relying on the diversity of their portfolios to weather the storm.

Singapore Airlines Engineering (SIAEC) has made the most auspicious expansion with the formal opening on Feb. 3 of a 108,000-sq.-ft. Airbus A380 overhaul hanger. The company began planning it as soon as Singapore Airlines (SIA) became launch customer for the double-deck transport in 2004. SIA has the largest fleet of A380s in service—10—and expects to take delivery of three more aircraft this year of the nine it has on order.

The S$50 million ($35.4 million) hangar is the sixth at SIAEC’s campus at Changi airport and is distinguished by a S$6 million computer-controlled, hydraulic docking system. The big hangar also will be used for Boeing 777 overhauls, and the docking system’s software has been written to account for the size and shape distances between the two airplanes. When SIAEC finished the first 24-month check in the new facility last September, it saw an immediate productivity improvement.

“Moving seats from the aircraft to the workshop once took us six hours,” says SIAEC Chairman Stephen Lee. “Now we do it in 2 hours. An in-house developed dock control and material management system monitors the complete status of an aircraft check. These advanced work processes will yield double-digit improvements in productivity and lead to faster turnaround of checks.”

Still, SIAEC’s investment has not yet brought in outside overhaul work, and other overhaul centers question whether the investment in the docking center will be justified.

Qantas, the other initial A380 operator, signed a contract with Lufthansa Technik during the Singapore Airshow to have its C checks completed in Frankfurt.

A380 servicing symbolizes how fiercely major aircraft service providers compete for work. Ameco, the Air China-Lufthansa MRO partnership, expanded its facilities in Beijing in 2008 with a four-bay A380 hangar that cost 710 million yuan ($104 million)—even though no Chinese carriers operate the big airplane.

But Beijing is a major Chinese hub, and Ameco expects to provide line maintenance for foreign carriers, initially and build from there to more extensive overhauls, just as it does on other widebody transports, says Ameco General Manager Andreas Meisel. An example of its reach in that area is a five-year contract Ameco signed with United Airlines to provide heavy maintenance for its 747 fleet.

Service providers are encouraged by the widely reported uptick in passenger and freight traffic toward the end of last year. The current recession differs from what they experienced earlier in the decade when passenger fear prompted a downturn after the Sept. 11 attacks. In that case, air freight traffic did not suffer, so there was steady demand to service those aircraft, even if passenger aircraft required less attention. This time, the recession hit air freight especially hard. But passenger and cargo are both picking up, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, now the world’s largest for air transportation.

“It looks like 2010 will be a little bit better,” says Lufthansa Technik Chairman August Wilhelm Henningsen.