May 14, 2010

PAT BRENNAN PHOTOS

Tradesmen work with lightweight woods and veneers for a jet’s luxury interior at Goderich Aircraft Inc.

FOCUS | General & Trade Contracting

Precision the hallmark of Goderich Aircraft Inc.’s jet refit facility

PAT BRENNAN

correspondent

HURON PARK, Ont.

Drop a nail at most construction sites and carpenters simply fetch another from their apron pocket and keep on hammering. Drop a nail at this unusual construction site and all work stops until the nail is recovered.

Plus, the nail had to be weighed before it could be hammered into place.

That’s the kind of precision and attentiveness required when building these penthouses in the sky. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters and other trades at Goderich Aircraft Inc. create and install luxury furnishings and finishes in large private jets.

Airplanes fly from all over the world to this former air force base amidst the flat farm fields of Huron County, 43 kilometres west of London, to get the VIP treatment their owners expect.

Daily Commercial News was recently given a tour of the large new hangar at the former Centralia NATO air base with two stipulations — don’t ask who owns the planes and don’t photograph the call letters on the tail. They too, can identify the owner.

The federal government committed $1.3 million towards building a 115,000 sq. ft. hangar at the airstrip, which includes a school where students are taught specific construction techniques. The school is operated as a satellite campus by London’s Fanshawe College. Engineer Mike Hosang said the firm expects to graduate 60 students this year to be put to work on luxury airplanes.

Blaine Field started Goderich Aircraft Inc. in 1993 with five employees and annual sales of $400,000. Today the firm employs 150 people with annual sales of $20 million. He expects to add 230 employees by 2015.

A sign acts as a reminder that all components added to the airframe must be precisely weighed

Students learn the various specialty trades required to provide maintenance on large jets, plus crafting penthouse-style facilities in the interior. Hosang said cabinet makers work with light-weight woods and veneers. “The weight of materials is an important factor in crafting a luxury finish in an airplane. Whatever we add to a stripped-down airframe has to be weighed first.”

Everything you would expect to find in a chief executive’s office, a corporate boardroom or a luxury hotel suite, gets built into airplanes that arrive here, although a marble Jacuzzi tub is ill advised.

Hosang said the training school will educate each student in all aspects of refurbishing a private jet.

“It’s much like an automobile assembly line, except the airplane doesn’t move. We train employees to be able to tackle all the disciplines involved. That way when the carpentry work is done on an airplane we can put those same people to work on the interior lighting system, or installing seating or doing metal fabrication for the fuselage.”

Some of the airplanes arriving at Goderich Aircraft are passenger planes being converted to private corporate jets. Some jets fly in for just a paint job.

The recession has increased sales for private jets. Some companies are unloading their airplanes as part of cost-cutting campaigns, while others are purchasing those used airplanes at significantly reduced prices.

The new owners want their company name or colours on the airplane, or the company logo emblazoned on the headrests of the leather seats. They fly to Huron Park for those upgrades.

The paint shop has 1,500 high-intensity lights flooding the fuselage and the paint jobs are much more elaborate and expensive than those applied to commercial airliners.

Field’s firm is seeking certification from Boeing as an airplane completion centre. It’s current work in converting and refurbishing private jets is part of its competency test.

If approved, Boeing would fly bare-bones airframes to Goderich Aircraft to be finished for their private jet customers.

Field purchased the retired military airfield in 2007 and named it after his father James T. Field, a Canadian who was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s. The airbase and its adjoining community was named Centralia when created by the RCAF in 1952 and became a busy NATO training base.

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