AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE firm SR Technics is to extend the contracts of about 200 line maintenance staff at Dublin Airport who were due to be made redundant at the end of this month.

The company had been due to pull out of Ireland on August 31st but has agreed to extend the line maintenance workers’ contracts until the end of October. It is understood that the extra two months’ work will allow time for a deal to be completed to secure the future of the jobs.

Separately a deal for the company’s base maintenance of landing gear and auxiliary power unit (APU) operations is understood to be close to completion.

A spokesman for the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment said an announcement on the takeover of the landing gear and APU assets, which would save another 200 jobs, is due to be made within the next two weeks. It is understood that the new company, which has yet to be confirmed, will occupy two of the six hangars used by SR Technics at Dublin airport.

The Swiss-owned SRT decided to break up the sale of assets at Dublin airport because it did not receive a significant bid for the entire operation. Several bids for all or part of SRT Ireland were received but they were substantially below the current market value of these assets, it said.

Last February SRT announced that it was closing its Irish subsidiary with the loss of 1,135 jobs. The company said the loss of major contracts, the current economic forecast, as well as the high cost-base of the Dublin operation, had led to the decision to close down.