Midcoast Aviation last month delivered to a very special
customer its first custom-completed Bombardier Global 5000, the first such
aircraft to be finished outside of Bombardier's Montreal completion center.
N47's new owner is none other than the FAA, whose engineers at the agency's
William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City will use the long-range
bizjet for flight-testing new safety, navigation and airspace efficiency
technologies, including GPS-based precision landing systems.
For Midcoast, the delivery marks the kickoff for what should
be a long string of Global work at its St. Louis Downtown Airport maintenance,
modification and completions center, one of four Midcoast locations in the St.
Louis area. Midcoast is the only active Bombardier-authorized service facility
for the Global aircraft in the U.S. and is Bombardier's primary choice for
non-factory Global and Challenger 604 completions, according to Midcoast
president Kurt F. Sutterer.
As such, Sutterer says Midcoast is in the process of more
than doubling its completion business for the year-long period that ends next
June. During that time, the company will have 31 Challengers and five Globals
in various stages of completion. Staffing the facility are 60 engineers, 150
airframe maintenance technicians, more than 100 avionics technicians and
various custom specialty shops.
Downtown is also the location of Midcoast's $6 million,
50,000-square-foot state-of-the-art paint facility, complete with a downdraft
air makeup system for quicker turnaround time. The facility, large enough to
simultaneously accommodate two 94-foot-wingspan aircraft like the Global
Express or Gulfstream 550, augments the company's existing 10,000-square-foot
paint hangar.
The new hangar, paint facility and half-million-dollar,
15,000-square-foot Customer Equipment Center are part of a $15.5 million
expansion program. The Customer Equipment Center, opened last spring, improves
storage conditions and increases security for removed customer components
during repair and refurbishing work.
Infrastructure and personnel upgrades to handle an onslaught
of large jets are underway as well. The company just announced plans to build a
$9 million, 115,000-square-foot hangar at St. Louis and it hired 160 new
employees over the past year. Sutterer says Midcoast will hire 100 additional
workers this year, bringing the company total to near 1,000.
When the new hangar opens next summer, the 700-foot-wide by
135-foot-deep structure will bring the company's overall hangar space to just
shy of a half-million square feet. The new hangar will be large enough to hold
six super-long-range bizjets or 16 midsize-to-large aircraft, the type of
aircraft Midcoast specializes in.
The pre-engineered metal structure features two 270-foot by
135-foot aircraft bays separated by 40,000 square ft of shop space on two
floors. It will also incorporate a 5,000-lb-capacity freight elevator. The
space will be used in part to expand Midcoast's upholstery shop, now housed in
another building.
The surge in infrastructure investment follows the company's
climbing revenues: Midcoast says it's on track to generate 40% growth in
revenue, to $195 million, during the fiscal year that began July 1.
