Aircraft Support Group is helping keep the Jetstar, a venerable first-generation business jet, alive and well, by providing parts and services to support operators well into the future.

Legend has it, as most legends tend to do, that aeronautical design wizard Kelly Johnson, after getting a call from the Air Force for an executive transport, doodled on a napkin during lunch the initial design for the Lockheed Jetstar.

Maybe it was on the tablecloth, the back of his lunch check or even a business card, but in 1960 Johnson’s sketch, like so many of his other celebrated works, flew off the drawing board and took its place in aviation history.

It’s a place in history that the original Jetstar design and its variants are continuing to hold onto today, still fulfilling its original Air Force mission.

These venerable designs of the master aerodynamicist Johnson, though, are getting grayer by the day; flown by a mere handful of still-qualified pilots who keep the roughly 85 still in known flying condition at the ready for their faithful owners.

But unlike the case with some aging, out-of-production designs, parts and support for the Jetstars are probably more readily available than one might imagine.

Lockheed itself still supports the airplanes because, as part of its original sales agreements that go back as much as four decades, the company committed itself to supporting the fleet as long as five original owners continue in possession of the airplanes.

Among those five original owners are Iraq and Iran. Of course, neither Lockheed nor any other U.S. company supports those fleets.

But, even as Lockheed continues its support, there is a Texas-based company just north of Houston, Texas that has become somewhat the Mecca for present-day Jetstar parts and support.

"I was out of a job, I had a family to support, I had no money, and had to do something pretty quickly," said Dick Isbell, whose company that began with $35,000 in savings and a dining room for an office in 1989 has risen to the forefront of Jetstar support.

"I had worked for Lockheed, I knew the airplane, and I knew people wanted good, reliable support for it, so that’s how we started," Isbell said.

Now working out of more than 14,000 square feet of modern office and warehouse space in Oak Ridge North, Texas, Aircraft Support Group’s early days weren’t so glamorous.

"We worked out of our house," Isbell said, noting that the house, a garage, and a metal building were soon taken over by a growing parts inventory.

"We were living and working right out of a residential neighborhood and I know our neighbors knew what was going on with the delivery trucks and a forklift running in an out of there during the day, but we didn’t bother anyone and the neighbors, I think, kind of liked the idea of someone being in the neighborhood all day to watch things," Isbell said.

A house across the street became available, and the Isbells bought that house in order to expand their operation, which had achieved certification as an FAA repair station.

As the business grew, so did the client base and so did what Isbell had to offer.

"At first, we were buying new surplus inventories of parts, and that was a source of parts for us," Isbell said, crediting, too, his relationship with Lockheed that became a mutually beneficial existence for both Lockheed and Aircraft Support Group over the years.

"As our repair station certification came in, we started buying other parts including cores that we overhauled here and then sent back out," Isbell said. "We continue to buy new surplus, cores, ‘as-removed’ parts and even entire airframes. We bought two Jetstar II’s, sitting out back, that we took as entire airframes."

As Isbell lapses into Jetstar-speak with a close-knit staff of less than a half dozen people including wife, Pat, it’s like witnessing creation of a foreign language. Part numbers, serial numbers–both on parts and airframes–pepper the conversation, drawing informed nods, information that forms the intelligence network Isbell & Company have crafted over the years in tracking not only customers, but a future source of parts.

"Actually, we don’t really want the airframes for parts," Isbell said. "We’d rather keep the airplanes flying. These airplanes are the only large airplanes [of their type] that don’t have life limits, and one Jetstar II has about 14,000 hours on it and it’s still going."

Sometimes, though, it’s fate that puts an airplane in Isbell’s hands.

"One of the Jetstar IIs we have was taken in for repainting, but [someone not familiar] with the process started sanding the paint off," Isbell grinned. "Unfortunately, before anyone could stop him, the thicknesses of the skin panels had been reduced beyond the point of airworthiness and it just wasn’t economically feasible to repair the airplane, so we got it for parts."

Isbell won’t talk about his art of the deals he makes for parts, but he doesn’t buy the engines and he admits he drives a hard bargain.

"You have to know what [constitute] ‘needed’ parts and you have to know what parts are sometimes those parts that are not [easily] available," he said. "You also have to know where you need to be on the prices you pay for parts in order to remain competitive."

Lockheed reportedly maintains an equipment inventory encompassing about 5,000 square feet of space. Aircraft Support Group maintains nearly triple that with row upon row of racks containing thousands of parts, seats, thrust reversers, relays, slipper tanks, well, if it’s for Jetstars, it’s likely to be found in one of the thousands of boxes.

"A lot of people [have asked] why we are interested in keeping an old dinosaur flying, but the truth is that there is no doubt the current fleet worldwide can still be flying for another 10 years at the least," Isbell said. "I probably have parts back there that I will never sell; maybe 80 percent of what I have will never leave here, but the 20 percent that does pays for the stuff that won’t."

Because of the Jetstar’s relatively low acquisition cost–often between $1.3 million and $2 million–the airplanes, despite the costs of operating and maintaining four engines and systems that are typical of a 40-year-old design, offer attractive dollar-for-dollar comparisons in competition with newer-model jets.

In fact, Isbell said, an argument exists that, for the money, a prospective jet owner can’t get the same amount of airplane for the money, the higher maintenance and operational costs notwithstanding.

"That’s another reason, I think, that the airplanes are going to continue being around because they are so over-engineered that it’s somewhat unlikely that they will ever wear out," he said. "We get airframes because of the airframes being damaged, not because they are being parted out."

Isbell’s business benefits, too, from Jetstars containing time-limited parts that regardless of condition are required to be overhauled periodically.

It’s not just the parts inventory that draws customers including private owners, FBOs, corporations, and fellow repair stations–many across the United States and Mexico–to Isbell’s door.

One thing that makes Isbell’s operation unique is that Isbell possesses original engineering drawings for nearly all the major components that bolt together in order to build the airplane.

It’s those drawings that not only enable Isbell to do repairs or overhauls, but they also provide Isbell a wealth of much-sought-after technical expertise.

"The drawings allow us to completely overhaul or repair any part we receive, but we also provide a lot of engineering technical support for the Jetstars because we can look at the original factory specs and give out [precise] information from the technical standpoint," Isbell said.

There’s also technical assistance available from Aircraft Support Group too, from the standpoint that two of the Jetstar airframes the company owns still have their cockpits and interiors relatively intact. What that means is that if a customer has a question about where a relay, for instance, might be located, the staff can go out, take a look and then tell the customer where the part is located.

"This has been a good business for us," Isbell said. "It’s like a lot of other businesses; it can be hard sometimes, but it’s been very rewarding in that we are helping keep a really great airplane in the air and flying–and it’s likely we’ll be able to continue doing it for quite a while to come."