Gulfstream has established dedicated resources at its MRO facility at St. Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia, Illinois, for mid-cabin aircraft. Other sites can still support mid-cabin aircraft, but the St. Louis site has a dedicated hangar, technicians and operations centre.
There are approximately 560 mid-cabin Gulfstream aircraft worldwide, about 70% of which are based in the USA.
“We have designated Gulfstream St. Louis as a mid-cabin maintenance centre of excellence,” said Derek Zimmerman, president, Gulfstream Customer Support. “The designation is our way of reinforcing our ongoing commitment to mid-cabin 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 mid-cabin customers’ maintenance and refurbishment needs.”
Gulfstream Dallas remains the company’s facility for mid-cabin 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 Savanna (Georgia), and will open new service centres in 2020 in Van Nuys (California), Palm Beach (Florida) and Farnborough (UK).
Gulfstream St. Louis’ dedicated mid-cabin hangar comprises 70,348ft² (6,536m²), which includes 30,000ft² (2,787m²) of hangar space and nearly 20,000ft² (1,858m²) of backshop space. The support space includes an operations centre staffed by a cross-functional team of representatives from Planning, Materials and Service Center Operations. In addition, the hangar will be the base for a service team manager and team of technicians focussed 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 mid-cabin aircraft: the G280, G200, G150 and 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 US FAA and EASA Part 145 repair station, which means its 420 employees can work on large- and mid-cabin aircraft registered in the USA and EU countries. In 2018, Gulfstream St. Louis had more than 340 aircraft visits.
