Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. has dedicated a hangar, operations center and team of technicians specifically for midcabin aircraft at its maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility at St. Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia, Illinois.
Other Gulfstream maintenance facilities will continue to support the company’s worldwide fleet of approximately 560 midcabin aircraft, Gulfstream hopes St. Louis will be an ideal destination for many midcabin operators because of its prime location and dedicated resources. About 70 percent of Gulfstream’s midcabin fleet is based in the U.S.
“We have designated Gulfstream St. Louis as a midcabin maintenance center of excellence,” said Derek Zimmerman, president, Gulfstream Customer Support. “The designation is our way of reinforcing our ongoing commitment to midcabin customers. The centrally located site has the personnel, skills, experience, knowledge, tooling, manuals and capacity to produce the quality and efficient work expected by our customers. It will truly be a one-stop MRO for our midcabin customers’ maintenance and refurbishment needs.”
Gulfstream Dallas remains the company’s facility for midcabin completions and provides maintenance for all Gulfstream aircraft. St. Louis’ enhancements come amid a series of Customer Support expansions: Gulfstream is accepting customers at new maintenance facilities in Appleton, Wisconsin, and Savannah, and will open new service centers in 2020 in Van Nuys, California; Palm Beach, Florida; and Farnborough, U.K.
Gulfstream St. Louis’ dedicated midcabin hangar comprises 70,348 square feet/6,536 square meters, which includes 30,000 sq ft/2,787 sq m of hangar space and nearly 20,000 sq ft/1,858 sq m of back shop space. The support space includes an operations center staffed by a cross-functional team of representatives from Planning, Materials and Service Center Operations responsible for optimizing a customer’s maintenance visit. In addition, the hangar will be the base for a Service Team Manager and team of technicians focused solely on maintenance, including airframe inspections and repair, avionics installations and upgrades and interior refurbishments for the company’s entire line of in-production and legacy midcabin aircraft: Gulfstream G280, Gulfstream G200, Gulfstream G150 and Gulfstream G100.
Gulfstream St. Louis’ refurbishment capabilities include full cabinet fabrication and finish, upholstery, composites and paint. Gulfstream added St. Louis, a former completions and maintenance facility for sister company Jet Aviation, to its service center network in September 2017. The site is a certified U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and European Aviation Safety Agency Part 145 repair station, which means its 420 employees can work on large-cabin and midcabin aircraft registered in the U.S. and European Union countries. In 2018, Gulfstream St. Louis had more than 340 aircraft visits. It has approximately 638,000 sq ft/59,272 sq m of hangar, shop and support space.