Strategic bottlenecks in commercial aviation MRO: OEM influence and the response of traditional maintenance providers

The commercial aviation, maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) industry is undergoing a fundamental architectural shift, as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) systematically dismantle a once-modular industry structure to create and exploit strategic bottlenecks. As OEMs tighten control over critical resources and migrate value across the aviation value chain, independent MRO firms face an existential threat to their market position and viability. This paper develops a novel analytical framework that combines industry-architecture concepts and modularity theory to systematically explain how OEMs establish and exploit strategic bottlenecks. It identifies and analyses three distinct bottleneck strategies OEMs use to reshape the industry structure to their advantage and leverage control over co-specialised assets to deliberately reduce the asset mobility of MRO providers: Controlled Expansion, License Networks, and Exclusive Partnerships. Our analysis demonstrates that the effectiveness of MRO counter-strategies depends fundamentally on their ability to restore this mobility. The contingent set of strategic responses for MRO providers that we introduce includes forming enduring alliances with competitors, multi-platform OEMs, and downstream customers, as well as actively influencing the regulatory and contractual frameworks governing value creation. This study provides an essential framework for MRO executives navigating competitive threats by presenting MRO strategic responses for counteracting OEM dominance. It also offers a new theoretical lens for analysing value migration in highly regulated, technology-intensive industries, and, specifically, the under-researched MRO sector, thus contributing to the aviation literature and the literature on strategic bottlenecks.