Paint

Paint Keeps Wing Aviation Customers Coming

Painting something with a spray gun isn't really all that hard, actually. A few hundred dollars worth of equipment, some paint, thinner, strainers, and a couple of hours and you're in business. Now, that might be okay if what you're painting is a family car, your boat, fence, or house. But try doing that with something larger, like an airplane, for instance, and the problem is more than just a matter of scale.

Ask Dave Perez, who manages the painting operation for Wing Aviation in Conroe, Texas, which churns out a regional jet every eight days and eight or nine corporate jets a month.

"This business has changed a lot over the years and it gets more demanding every day," Perez said. "No longer do you worry about how well the job comes out, you have to worry, too, about the environment and employee safety.

"Painting aircraft has gotten more complex than ever before and with the [ever-changing environmental] regulations, you've got to be on top of all that at all times or face big trouble," he said.

"We spend a lot of time--a lot of my time as a manager is spent--making sure that we are staying up with all the state and federal regulations governing environmental protection," Perez said. "We spend zero time trying to get around the regulations because it's just better business in the long run, and cheaper, to comply with them."

It was three years ago that retired businessman and former Army aviator John Wing, who had traveled the world in his own Gulfstream II-SP, invested in what became a $10 million partnership between the private and public sectors to open a facility for heavy-jet maintenance specializing in Gulfstream aircraft. The business has grown to include not just Gulfstream maintenance, but also maintenance for Learjets and Hawkers and complete refurbishment capabilities and a first-class FBO operation.

"State-of-the-art facilities not only ensure our work is high quality, but they also allow us to maintain our concern for the welfare of our employees as well as the environment," Perez said.

The company uses two large buildings, one 17,000 square feet, the other about 24,000 square feet, to completely enclose a painting project. Gone are highly-toxic chemical strippers, replaced with ones equally effective, but more environmentally friendly.

Self-curing paints, which depend on a chemically-induced drying method rather than an evaporative one, reduce airborne pollutants. Filtration systems sift both intake and exhaust air flowing through the structure.

Workers are sheathed in protective clothing and equipped with positive-pressure breathing apparatus, ensuring paint goes on the airplane and not into the lungs, eyes, and ears.

"What you are left with at this point is a highly-efficient and safe painting environment that not only protects our painters, but improves the overall quality while cutting down on the time it takes to get the job done," Perez said.

That efficiency, quality and turnaround time is making a reputation for the Conroe paint facility.

"We thought it would take at least 18 months to two years before we'd get to a point where the paint shop would start attracting consistent business," Perez said. "Our very first year, we painted 21 jets and double that last year. Going into our third year, there's really no way to tell just how many we will paint because of the demand we're seeing."

How fast the turnaround takes, Perez said, depends largely on what type paint job the customer wants. With commercial aircraft such as regional jets, paint jobs are expected to last between three and five years because the airplanes are subjected to the rigors of 24/7 flying. Paint jobs on corporate jets like the Gulfstreams tend to be more costly because of the various options available and owners' tastes.

"What options an owner might want such as epoxy fillers and exotic paint schemes determines the final costs and how long a particular project will take," he said. "Rule of thumb, a Gulfstream might take as long as three weeks to complete; longer depending on the complexity of the paint."

While the act of painting an airplane is a matter of scale, Wing said his company stresses high quality over high quantity. "Painting aircraft today is more complicated and imposes demands on us to ensure we not only do a good job, but also ensure the safety of workers and the environment," said Brian Wing, company president. "We're pleasantly surprised at the rate the painting business has developed," he said, noting the painting facility is ahead of schedule as a generator of new and additional business to the company's emphasis on heavy jet maintenance.

"One reason for that is the quality of the work coupled with the ability to turn a project around in a relatively short time," he said. "The only way to maintain our quality is to ensure controlled growth. For any new business--and we are just in our third year now--to carefully manage its growth and not to give in to the lure of more and more business at what might be the expense of quality is difficult," he said. "The quantity of work will certainly come as long as the quality of our work is maintained."

Wing said as the business continues its growth, especially in the area of painting aircraft, the process will continually be evaluated to recognize trends toward further enhanced economic development.

"We know that to remain in business, we have to remain competitive, so we are constantly evaluating our processes to ensure we are as lean as we can possibly be while maintaining exacting quality control," Wing said.

Attention to detail coupled with cost-effective efficiency has also now brought Continental Express in-house as a customer. The carrier operates Embraer 135 and 145 regional jets, and as the fleet's original paint jobs began to show the wear-and-tear of life flying the line, Expressjets started arriving in Conroe for a facelift.

"We were very pleased with the contract because it speaks to the job we are doing here and the fact that Continental Express wanted to make a commitment here in the Houston market," said Perez, whose early career included painting heavy airliners for an Oklahoma company. "It's nice, too, to have your work recognized that way by the industry; both in the commercial areas as well as within the large corporate-jet community," Perez said.

Perez said that Wing Aviation prefers using modern paint systems, noting the systems, from primer to finish coat, are better products collectively compared to older methods using primers perhaps from one manufacturer and finish products from another.

"We use paint systems from Sherwin-Williams such as Jet-Glo and Acry-Glo; U.S. Paint's Awl Grip and PPG products for applications involving most of the corporate jet fleets," Perez said.

"For commercial applications such as Continental Express, Akzo-Nobel and Axon are what we regularly use while Sea-to-Sky Innovations, El Dorado, and Napier Technologies are among the strippers we normally use," he said.

"We use Sherwin-Williams products as a matter of shop preference, but we can provide whatever system the customer asks for," Perez said. "We can provide any number of customer-preferred options when it comes to the finished product." -- By Bob Howie