Jin Air, Air Busan, Air Seoul bring 130 maintenance staff together ahead of merger

Jin Air, Air Busan and Air Seoul have completed the first phase of integrating their maintenance offices at major airports and are now working to strengthen cooperation among frontline staff. With the launch of a combined carrier set for next year, the three airlines plan to build a shared organizational culture that allows employees from different companies to work side by side — going beyond simply sharing facilities and workspaces.

Jin Air announced Thursday that it held a joint sports day with Air Busan and Air Seoul at Yeongmaru Park on Yeongjongdo, Incheon, on Wednesday, with about 130 maintenance division employees taking part.

The event followed the recent completion of the first-phase maintenance office integration at major domestic airports. With staff from all three carriers now working in shared spaces, the gathering was designed to reduce the sense of separate company identities and build a spirit of cooperation among them.

Maintenance personnel from airports across the country attended. Regardless of which airline they work for, participants were divided into four mixed teams and took part in team-building activities including wave relays, large-ball rolling, group jump rope and relay races.

Rather than grouping employees by company, the organizers deliberately mixed staff from different airlines on each team. The aim was to give workers who normally handle aircraft maintenance at their respective airports a chance to bond outside the hangar and develop the camaraderie needed for joint operations.

"As I ran and sweated alongside colleagues from airports across the country — people I had only just started sharing a workspace with — I felt the invisible psychological barriers come down and realized we had truly become one family," said Lee Seung-jae, an assistant manager at Jin Air who took part in the event.

Because aircraft maintenance is directly tied to flight safety, establishing a solid collaborative framework among maintenance personnel from the three carriers is considered one of the key challenges as they merge into a single organization.

Each airline previously ran its own separate maintenance operation, and those structures must now be reorganized to fit the integrated carrier's framework. Beyond sharing physical workspaces, the companies say they need to lay the groundwork for cooperation across all aspects of day-to-day operations — including work procedures and communication practices.

"The core competitive strength of the new integrated Jin Air will be its airtight maintenance safety capabilities, and the foundation of that is solid teamwork among frontline staff," a Jin Air official said. "We will build a unified organizational culture and generate strong maintenance synergies from it."

Jin Air is also pressing ahead with integration work across other divisions — including cabin crew and flight operations — in addition to maintenance.

In September, the three carriers conducted a joint emergency evacuation drill involving cabin crew from all three airlines to assess safety performance. This month, Jin Air also took delivery of its first Airbus A321CEO aircraft, continuing preparations for fleet integration.

Overseas antitrust reviews related to the merger are also nearing completion. Jin Air received approval from Vietnam's competition authority on Oct. 2, wrapping up all outstanding foreign regulatory reviews.

However, the formal launch of the combined carrier still requires several additional steps domestically — including a merger review by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, approval from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and shareholder approval.

The three airlines are targeting March of next year as their merger date. Jin Air plans to continue working through the remaining administrative procedures while pressing ahead with on-the-ground integration across maintenance, flight operations and cabin services.