Gulfstream has dedicated a hangar, operations centre and team of technicians specifically for midsize aircraft at its MRO facility at St. Louis Downtown airport in Cahokia, Illinois.

While other Gulfstream maintenance facilities will continue to support the company's worldwide fleet of approximately 560 midsize aircraft, Gulfstream St. Louis is expected to attract many midsize operators because of its location and resources. About 70 per cent of Gulfstream's midcabin fleet is based in the US.

“We have designated Gulfstream St. Louis as a midcabin maintenance centre of excellence,” says president of customer support Derek Zimmerman. “The designation is our way of reinforcing our ongoing commitment to midcabin customers. The centrally-located site has the personnel, skills, experience, knowledge, tooling, manuals and capacity to produce the quality and efficient work expected by our customers. It will truly be a one-stop MRO for our midcabin customers' maintenance and refurbishment needs.”

Gulfstream Dallas remains the company's facility for midsize completions and provides maintenance for all Gulfstream aircraft. St. Louis' enhancements come amid a series of customer support expansions: Gulfstream is accepting customers at new maintenance facilities in Appleton, Wisconsin, and Savannah, and will open new service centres in 2020 in Van Nuys, California; Palm Beach, Florida; and Farnborough, UK.

Gulfstream St. Louis' hangar comprises 70,348 sq ft of space, which includes 30,000 sq ft of hangarage and nearly 20,000 sq ft of back shop room. The support space includes an operations centre staffed by a cross-functional team of representatives from planning, materials and service centre operations responsible for optimising a customer's maintenance visit. In addition, the hangar will be the base for a service team manager and team of technicians focused solely on maintenance, including airframe inspections and repair, avionics installations and upgrades and interior refurbishments for the company's entire line of in-production and legacy midsize aircraft: the G280, G200, G150 and G100.

Gulfstream St. Louis' refurbishment capabilities include full cabinet fabrication and finish, upholstery, composites and paint.

Gulfstream added St. Louis, a former completions and maintenance facility for sister company Jet Aviation, to its service centre network in September 2017. The site is a certified FAA and EASA Part 145 repair station, which means its 420 employees can work on large-cabin and midsize aircraft registered in the US and European Union countries. In 2018, Gulfstream St. Louis had more than 340 aircraft visits.