Friday, January 11, 2013

Business taking off for NS Aviation: Smith Reynolds Airport (KINT), Winston Salem, North Carolina

David Rolfe/Journal 
 Russ Kota, V.P. Maintenance for North State Aviation in Winston-Salem, NC, on the main hangar floor with seats from a United Airlines 737-800, rear, being upgraded to mount seatback television screens.


Rising demand for more in-flight entertainment options and safety apparatus is proving to be a boon for NS Aviation LLC’s business and employment.

The company operates as North State Aviation at Smith Reynolds Airport.

NS Aviation recently extended its multiyear maintenance contract with United Airlines to include renovating select aircraft with Live TV for first-class and coach seating.

On Thursday, United had at least 80 employees working on the Live TV wiring for a Boeing 757-300 and Boeing 737-800 aircraft in one of its two bays. The towering Boeing 757 took up more than half of the bay’s 48,000-square-foot space.

The project requires installing antennas that are needed to rotate 360 degrees to follow the GPS signal of the DirectTV satellite.

“We can handle three of those projects a month, or 36 a year, each taking between seven and 10 days to complete,” said Joel Marion, NS Aviation’s sales and marketing director “We can also do what we call ‘drop-ins’ for maintenance with our other regular customers.”

In the other bay, NS Aviation employees were performing maintenance work on a Miami Air aircraft and putting a nitrogen generation system kit into a United aircraft. NS Aviation is one of select number of maintenance companies nationwide that can install the kits.

The nitrogen generation system is being required for all U.S. aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration by 2017, with half of each airline’s fleet in compliance by the end of 2014. Nitrogen, as an inert gas, reduces the flammability risk of center fuel tanks compared with oxygen.

The additional maintenance and up-fit work has NS Aviation handling three lines for United most days.

It has enabled the company to hire 70 workers since the contract began in September for a workforce of 180 full time and 33 part time, according to Charlie Creech, its president. He expects to hire another 20 full-time workers by the end of March.

It also led to the signing of a five-year lease with the Airport Commission of Forsyth County. The company had been working on a monthly lease for more than two years.

“We think of gaining the additional United business as a pretty big vote of confidence in the quality and speed of our work,” Creech said.

“We’re talking with them about additional business. If we can get to four steady lines with United, it would be about all the work we can handle, which would be a welcome issue to handle.”

Particularly considering the two Smith Reynolds bays had been empty for nearly 1½ years after the collapse of Pace Airlines Inc. in September 2009.

NS Aviation had 31 employees when it announced in January 2011, with Gov. Bev Perdue's assistance, that it would have 308 employees within four years as part of the expansion.

The company pledged the jobs will pay an average wage of $42,072 - $80 more than the average in Forsyth County. It would spend nearly $1.3 million on capital investments.

In return, the state made the company eligible for a $300,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund. It will also benefit from a $500,000 grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation to the airport commission for airport infrastructure improvements.

Mark Davidson, director of Smith Reynolds Airport, said NS Aviation’s ability to gain the United business is rewarding the airport for its optimism when the company surfaced in 2010.

Creech said the company is finding employees through aviation-manufacturing programs locally through Guilford Technical Community College, and through aviation academies in other parts of the state and outside the state.

He said the company continues to hire qualified Pace employees as demand increases. It is gradually building an employee pipeline through a limited apprentice program that will help employees earn an FAA license certification in airframe or powertrain/engine maintenance and repair work in 18 months or both in 30 months.

Story, images, video:   http://www.journalnow.com

http://www.airnav.com/airport/KINT

No comments:

Post a Comment