Aircraft maintenance is emerging as one of the more substantial international businesses developing around the Hainan Free Trade Port.
Foreign airlines are sending aircraft to Haikou for heavy maintenance, painting and modification work. GEnx-1B engines are being overhauled locally, aviation parts are being stored alongside the maintenance base, and Hainan this year carried out its first whole-aircraft dismantling job.
The technical base predates Hainan’s island-wide customs closure in December 2025. Heavy aircraft maintenance, painting, component repair and engine work were all operating before then.
What has changed is the framework surrounding that base. Hainan introduced additional rules for temporary inbound repair before closure, the post-closure zero-tariff system widened the range of potentially eligible goods, and Haikou is preparing a major expansion of the airport comprehensive bonded zone.
The maintenance base predates customs closure
The one-stop aircraft maintenance base at Haikou Meilan International Airport began operating in 2022 within the Haikou Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone.
HNA Technic is the main industrial platform. Its subsidiary, Grand China Aviation Maintenance, operates ten heavy-maintenance line positions, comprising two for widebody aircraft and eight for narrowbody aircraft.
Aircraft painting is handled by HNA-STTS, a joint venture between HNA Technic and France’s STTS Group. Its painting facilities can handle one widebody aircraft and two narrowbody aircraft at the same time.
HNA Technic also operates component-repair businesses covering mechanical, electrical, electronic, wheel-and-brake, battery and composite work. Engine overhaul was added in 2023, when a dedicated GEnx-1B engine-maintenance facility at Haikou Meilan Airport entered operation.
The engine company has registered capital of RMB 225 million. According to a Hainan Airlines Holdings shareholder announcement, Hainan Airlines Holdings owns 60%, Haikou Construction Group 35.56% and Hainan Haikong Asset Management 4.44%.
By July 2026, the facility had cumulatively completed 38 GEnx-1B engine deliveries. It holds approvals from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the US Federal Aviation Administration and, since July 2026, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
By June 30, HNA Technic said the Haikou base had completed more than 3,000 aircraft maintenance events.
Earlier figures, published at the end of March, put cumulative whole-aircraft painting at more than 330 jobs and component repairs at more than 70,000. A separate HNA Technic report published in April said more than 200 inbound foreign-aircraft maintenance and painting events had been completed.
Foreign airlines are returning to Haikou
HNA Technic said in April 2026 that its Haikou operations had attracted more than 30 overseas airline customers across more than ten countries and regions. Several have returned with additional aircraft or placed longer-term orders.
Qatar Airways sent three Boeing 777 aircraft to Hainan for painting in 2023. In early 2024, HNA-STTS said it signed a three-year painting agreement with Qatar Airways covering an order book of nearly RMB 100 million. A Boeing 787 completed in April 2024 was described as the first aircraft handled under that agreement.
HNA-STTS announced its first Korean Air painting job on December 1, 2025, involving a Boeing 737-900ER. The company described the aircraft as a trial intended to open the way for further cooperation. By late July 2026, it said it had delivered 14 narrowbody painting orders and received a four-aircraft Boeing 787 commission. The first of those 787s had entered the paint facility, with the remaining three scheduled to follow.
VietJet has also increased its use of Haikou. After the first Vietnamese inbound maintenance job in March 2024, the base had accepted around 19 Vietnamese aircraft for maintenance by October 2025, with further VietJet aircraft scheduled.
Other documented customers include Royal Jordanian and Jeju Air. Royal Jordanian sent a Boeing 787 to Haikou for modification and painting in 2025, while a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 completed maintenance under Hainan’s temporary inbound-repair pilot in May 2024.
VietJet and Royal Jordanian representatives quoted in Chinese media have cited customs clearance, parts availability, maintenance capability and cost when discussing their use of the Haikou base.
Grand China Aviation Maintenance said overseas-repair revenue rose from RMB 35 million in 2023 to RMB 166 million in 2024, according to an Invest Haikou report citing the company’s finance officer.
How the inbound-repair system works
Foreign aircraft were already entering Haikou for bonded maintenance well before Hainan’s island-wide customs closure in December 2025. One documented example was a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 that underwent maintenance in Haikou under the temporary inbound-repair arrangement in May 2024.
A Hainan arrangement introduced on December 27, 2023 allows qualifying goods entering from abroad for repair to be handled as bonded maintenance within designated customs-supervised areas.
The arrangement applies in Yangpu Bonded Port Area, Haikou Comprehensive Bonded Zone and Haikou Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone, as well as any additional areas approved by the State Council. Participating enterprises must be approved, and the goods must fall within the permitted repair scope.
If the repaired aircraft is re-exported, no import duty, import VAT or consumption tax is levied. If it instead enters the domestic market, tax is assessed on its condition after repair.
Aviation materials were already receiving tax relief
Hainan’s post-closure tax regime expanded an existing system rather than starting from scratch. Qualifying raw and auxiliary materials were already eligible for zero-tariff treatment before December 2025.
Under Hainan’s post-closure tax regime, companies included on the provincial list of Free Trade Port beneficiary entities can import goods outside Hainan’s import-taxation catalogue without import duty, import VAT or consumption tax, subject to the applicable use conditions and customs supervision.
The rules also cover zero-tariff materials consumed in repairing foreign aircraft or aircraft components that enter Hainan and are subsequently re-exported. Those goods are relieved from supplementary import taxes, but cannot later be diverted to another use.
The system was used for aviation materials on the first day of customs closure. On December 18, 2025, Hainan Airlines and another company filed three declarations at Meilan Airport Customs for aircraft materials, including resistors and sealing rings, with a combined value of RMB 71,300. A separate Hainan Provincial Government report said the goods received a 10% tariff exemption.
Parts supply is moving closer to the maintenance base
HNA Technic has been developing local inventory arrangements alongside the maintenance operation to reduce dependence on parts being shipped only after they are needed.
In 2025, it opened an aviation spare-parts consignment warehouse under an arrangement with Collins Aerospace. Under the model, the supplier retains ownership of the parts while they remain in stock. Ownership transfers when the maintenance company actually uses them. The base also has a separate materials-management relationship involving Satair, an Airbus company.
Bringing parts closer to the maintenance operation reduces the time aircraft spend waiting for components to arrive from overseas. These arrangements add a parts-supply function alongside aircraft checks, painting, components and engine maintenance at the Haikou base.
Aircraft dismantling has started, but remains an early-stage business
Grand China Aviation Maintenance began dismantling an Airbus A320 in June 2026, in what was reported as Hainan’s first whole-aircraft dismantling project. The company had already secured CAAC approval for aircraft dismantling before the project began. By July 30, the A320 was reported to be 96% complete. The project adds another aviation-aftermarket activity to the base.
Haikou is preparing to nearly double the bonded zone
On September 11, Haikou issued tenders for surveying and preliminary design work for an expansion of the Haikou Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone.
The project would add approximately 0.43 square kilometres, or 645 mu, taking the total zone to about 0.87 square kilometres.
That represents an increase of approximately 98% on the existing area, based on the dimensions published in the tender.
The planned works include a new maintenance apron, roads, customs surveillance and information systems, new checkpoints and a dedicated one-stop aircraft-maintenance customs checkpoint on the boundary between the maintenance apron and the airport’s parallel taxiway.
The southern expansion area is specifically designated for aircraft maintenance and aircraft dismantling.
The government project will provide the infrastructure and prepared land. Maintenance and dismantling companies entering the expansion area would build their own factories. As of mid-September, the expansion remained at the survey and preliminary-design procurement stage.
The cluster remains HNA-centred
Haikou now has heavy aircraft maintenance, painting, component repair, engine overhaul, parts storage, aircraft and engine leasing and an initial dismantling project operating around the same airport and customs environment.
The structure remains heavily centred on HNA Technic. Grand China Aviation Maintenance sits within the HNA group, while HNA-STTS is a joint venture between HNA Technic and France’s STTS Group.
Hainan Airlines Holdings owns 60% of the engine company, with the remaining 40% held by Haikou Construction Group and Hainan Haikong Asset Management.
International suppliers are also present through parts-management arrangements, including Collins Aerospace and Satair. The structure is therefore more diverse than a wholly internal HNA operation, but the evidence still supports describing Haikou as an emerging international aviation-services cluster rather than an established regional hub. More than 200 inbound foreign-aircraft maintenance and painting events had been reported by April 2026, while dismantling had only its first documented whole-aircraft project and the bonded-zone expansion remains at design stage.
The next evidence to watch will be repeat foreign-airline work, international engine customers, additional dismantling projects and companies committing to the bonded-zone expansion.
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