Elliott Aviation’s Complete Completion Center

With the opening of its state-of-the-art completion center, Elliott Aviation has achieved its goal of becoming a one-stop solution for its growing list of business aviation customers.

If you had commissioned the late Norman Rockwell to paint a picture of a true American aviation family and their vision of a successful company, an ideal candidate would be Elliott Aviation. What began in 1936 as young Herbert Elliott’s dream of learning to fly has grown steadily into one of business aviation’s most successful and well-respected companies employing approximately 400 highly trained and motivated professionals at its facilities in Moline, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and Omaha.

"Like most small aviation companies in the late 1930s, we began as a flight-training operation," explained Mike Turner, marketing director for Elliott Aviation. And then the family branched into aircraft charter, then into aircraft sales, and naturally from sales Elliott got into the maintenance business. And from the maintenance business the company saw a growing need on the service side. "So that’s where our strategic plan is headed right now," Turner said.

The strategic plan Turner mentioned was put in motion in around 1995 when the determination was made to grow the company’s presence in the light- to medium-jet market and become a one-stop shop for those operators. To achieve that goal, Elliott’s management team knew they had to provide services beyond just maintenance and sales.

Paint completes the puzzle

"When we began to grow into the service area, we started out on the avionics mod side," Turner said. "Right now we have 35 STCs for TAWS and TCAS alone. Then we opened our interior shop in 1999. Since then, we’ve done a few Beechjets and quite a few King Air interiors, but we were really hindered because we didn’t have the final piece of the puzzle, which was the paint facility."

"Our customers don’t want to have to move the airplane from one place to another to have their modifications and refurb work done," he continued. "That’s what lead us to decide to build the new facility. I guess you could say our timing was bad, considering how the economy has been, but at the same time when we do come out of it, we’ll be in the right position to build the business that we know will be there."

And when Elliott’s customers do come to the Moline facility, what they will find is a paint and completion center ready to meet all of their aircraft modification and update needs. "We’re really proud of this whole operation," he continued. "But what really makes our paint facility one-of-a-kind are the combination of all the different features we designed in. The unique downdraft system is one of the key parts of it."

Upside of downdraft

One of the biggest problems with any paint booth is the chance that tiny dust particles and paint overspray will circulate through the room only to settle on the aircraft and ruin the freshly painted surface. The specially designed downdraft system in Elliott Aviation’s new facility will eliminate that problem.

"If you take our paint bay and split it down the middle, you’ll see we have two independent air circulation systems," Turner said. "One on each side with the ductwork on the floor connecting the two. Along with that you will find separate filtration systems on both walls and up above where the air is recirculated back down over the top of the aircraft. That’s where the downdraft comes in."

The paint bay also has a grate system on the floor. Elliott’s painters position the airplane over those grates and the air is drawn down into them to capture particulates and paint overspray. Another feature is additional ventilation grates in the four corners of the bay. These grates eliminate the problem of dead spots in the corners where dust and overspray can accumulate only to settle on the aircraft after the downdraft system is turned off.

"In our booth the airflow is even and continuous," he said. "It creates a much cleaner finish that is virtually free of any marks from dust or overspray fallout."

Another feature of the new facility that enhances the finish is the computer-controlled environmental system Elliott installed. The system can not only control the precise temperature and humidity called for by the paint’s manufacturer, it can also operate in a drying cycle, which increases the room’s temperature to a preset level then decreases it again. "What we’ve found is it can reduce the drying time about half when compared to regular air drying," Turner added.

Painting by the book

Everyone knows that a great paint job begins long before the paint hits the airframe. And even though they were new to the painting game, Elliott’s team wanted to ensure that every step of a paint job would be completed to the highest possible standards for quality and consistency.

As Turner explained it, they decided the best way to get started was by writing a complete, step-by-step painting procedures manual. "It is written by our paint shop manager to the ISO 9000 [quality system] format," he said. "Each book is model specific and takes someone through every step of the process for each aircraft. There are certain parts on every aircraft that you can’t put paint on."

Other guidelines spelled out in Elliott’s "paint-by-numbers" manuals are the specific requirements of RVSM-certified aircraft. "RVSM issues specific guidelines on exactly where you can and cannot put paint stripes with regards to the static port," Turner continued. "And it varies on a by-model basis. Basically there needs to be a clear area around those sensors that can’t have air flow altered by paint edges. It’s real specific and it’s all spelled out in our book."

But Elliott’s commitment to quality didn’t stop with the creation of the paint procedures manuals. When the first airplane was ready to be run through the new paint facility, Elliott teamed with Sherwin-Williams, the company’s exclusive paint supplier, to hold customized training sessions in the facility.

The finishing touch

Elliott’s management team sees the new completion center playing a vital role in helping achieve the goal of being a one-stop solution for all customer needs.

"The addition of the new paint capabilities all sort of fits together avionics-wise," explained Dan Frahm, Elliott Aviation’s director of business development. "To be successful and meet customer needs, you have to be able to fit together how to do RVSM, TAWS, and TCAS, how to do flat panel, and how to meet all the FAA’s regulatory requirements, and do paint, interiors, airframe, and engine work. So, if you have a paint facility but can’t do RVSM, it doesn’t do your customer much good if they want the convenience of completing them both at one time.

"The owners of our target aircraft are budget minded," he added. "Rather than take an all-or-nothing approach, what we like to do is lay out a plan for a customer’s airplane that will give them high growth flexibility into the future." And that ability to give the customer what they’re looking for has put Elliott Aviation at the forefront of the business aviation’s past, present, and future.