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Flying Colours Corp., the North American maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business, will be talking up its heavy maintenance skills at this year’s National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) tradeshow as work on three 120-month (8C) maintenance inspections for a trio of Bombardier Global aircraft continues at its Peterborough, Ont, facility.
The Globals–two North American, one international–are being stripped right back to the airframes to allow for a complete structural inspection.
In addition, interior components, wall panels, insulating surfaces, floorboards, and external fairings and panels, will be removed to undergo detailed maintenance assessments and overhauls.
The landing gear is also being removed to undergo a thorough review. To support the work scope, Flying Colours has built a customized Global tail-dock to ensure engineers can access this part of the airframe securely and efficiently.
“The number of Global C-check requests we receive is growing, so we’re dedicating time and money to training our team and investing in our infrastructure to be ready to meet the demand,” said Sean Gillespie, executive vice-president of Flying Colours.
In addition to the scheduled maintenance checks, the aircraft owners are maximizing the down-time by having a number of interior modifications performed. These include floorplan changes, soft furnishing upgrades, and woodwork touch-ups.
Connectivity upgrades include installation of new cabin management systems, as well as Ku band, Ka band and ADS-B Out functionality. Each heavy inspection is anticipated to take up to 100 days pending any unexpected repairs.
Once the additional work is completed, the first aircraft will be redelivered to its owner in December.
Heavy checks on a variety of other aircraft, including Bombardier Challengers, Learjet, and Hawker Beechcraft types, are also in process at the Peterborough and St. Louis KSUS Flying Colours facilities.
A further two Globals are waiting to check-in for their 8C inspections at Peterborough, and discussions for considerably more are in various stages of negotiation.
“Our maintenance teams handle light through to heavy maintenance on a regular basis, and we have the added bonus of being able to undertake any interior mods, technical upgrades or external paint work, at the same time. This helps owners save time and money. We anticipate that the growing heavy maintenance business will add significant value to our business over the next few years,” added Gillespie.
