Danish aviation company Air Service Vamdrup ApS turned 25 years old in April. “Time flies, as we say,” says Bent Iversen. In 1988, he founded Air Service Vamdrup ApS having originally trained as an aircraft mechanic in the former Aircraft Service Centre in Vamdrup, where he helped maintain a De Havilland Dove which was used for skydiving. Off duty, he used to parachute from the aircraft himself. In 1988, he decided to establish his own company, and the first customer was the Dove. The company developed steadily forward and gained more customers, including Danish Air Transport with its first Skyvan.

“They quickly became a major customer for us, and for several years we had mechanics stationed around the world as well as a small workshop in Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, to support them,” explains Torben Biehl Jensen, who is the current day-to-day workshop manager at Air Service Vamdrup. “Some 10 years ago, Danish Air Transport decided to establish its own maintenance facility, so at that time we restructured the company and made room for a lot of new customers,” he explains.

“Over the years, we have worked a whole lot in the hangars in Vamdrup, but we have also had many exciting experiences all over the world. Since we have an authorisation to carry out line maintenance, we have often packed our tools and spare parts to travel out to help our customers. We have visited so many places. Burma, Dubai, Finland, Germany, Portugal, France and Africa to mention a few,” says Iversen. He and Jensen particularly remember one exotic task that took place in the Sahara. “Related to the Paris-Dakar race, a Skyvan had landed in the desert with a team of doctors. Since the ground had been too soft during landing, the nose gear had bent backwards, so we had to do a lot of structural work directly onsite in the desert. For about three weeks we shuttled back and forth from the city to the desert every day. It was pretty special,” they explain.

Jensen has been with Air Service Vamdrup almost for as long as Iversen himself. He was employed in 1989 as the company's first mechanic apprentice, and completed his training in 1992.

Today, Iversen still spends his everyday life in the hangars in Vamdrup, employing 25 staff mem-bers. “We have had some wonderful, colourful years with many exper-iences all over the world, and I am not at all ready to stop yet.”