Flying Colours Corp. has taken up residence in its fifth hangar at the Spirit of St. Louis airport. The existing building, which is ideally located adjacent to the KSUS runway, adds 30,000 square feet to the St. Louis footprint, and the company says, complements the expanded cabinetry and interiors workshop opened at the facility in January 2018.
Since taking over the hangar lease in December 2018 the local team has been outfitting the building, installing new state-of-the-art tooling and supplementary maintenance equipment as well as revamping the office décor. The completed facility accommodates up to three parallel large-jet maintenance, avionics upgrades and interior projects at once. It is initially expecting to support heavy maintenance work and two Bombardier Global aircraft are already in-situ for 120-month heavy maintenance checks.
A recruitment drive is ramping up to source more than 50 extra maintenance engineers, technicians and administrative support personnel, bringing the St. Louis workforce to more than 200 in total.
The addition of the fifth hangar runs in parallel with the construction at Flying Colours’ Peterborough, Ontario headquarters of a fourth hangar which will be large enough to manage completions, refurbishment, maintenance and paint work in a new dedicated paint shop for Bombardier and Gulfstream large jet types, as well as executive airliners.
“Our business continues to grow as we build our reputation for maintenance, refurbishments and completion projects on time and on budget. Our customers also value the fact we can run interiors and maintenance simultaneously, so reducing down time. We were turning work away in St. Louis so it’s great to have the hangar ready and open for operations,” says Sean Gillespie, EVP Flying Colours Corp. The addition of the St. Louis hangar, and the building of new workshops in Peterborough, represent Flying Colours ongoing expansion plans driven by growth in customer demand.