The first quarter of 2020 sees the beginning of operations at Flying Colours brand new CAD$25 million hangar. Representing the fourth phase of ongoing infrastructure expansion, the 100,000 sq ft building – the largest at its Peterborough, Ontario headquarters – is increasing capacity for completions, refurbishments and paint work.

The building will comprise a hangar spacious enough to accommodate maintenance work on executive airliner-size aircraft, an interiors workshop, meeting rooms and a new board room, and will enable Flying Colours to accommodate the increasing number of clients requesting maintenance, interior modifications, avionics upgrades and paint work to be performed simultaneously. The ability to run projects in parallel reduces downtime, maximises budget and ensures projects complete on time, all of which are attractive for aircraft owners. The expansion has required the recruitment of more than 60 team members to bolster the increased demand for maintenance, interiors and paint expertise.

Part of the hangar area is given over to a purpose built, climate controlled paint shop featuring state-of-the-art technology to support the growing demand for paint work for in-service and new completion aircraft. An expanding team of paint technicians is using the opportunity to move away from chromate primers to non-chromate products, to deliver improved specifications and conformances for the aviation industry. These moves will improve the paint finish, reduce waste and make a positive impact to worker's health and environmental protection. The experienced paint team will maximise the efficiencies of the shop to improve turnaround times, offer a wider range of paint techniques and apply the unique and unusual designs requested by many customers. The fourth paint shop complements the existing Flying Colours paint operations, which include a long-term contract with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the painting of the Bombardier Global central-fuselage, regular resprays of pre-owned aircraft and final painting of green aircraft.

“Our business continues to grow at all our locations as we continue to build on our reputation for high quality work across a range of OEM airframes,” states executive VP Eric Gillespie. “Here in Peterborough we were running out of space, so we are looking forward to beginning operations in the new hangar. Once up and running we will be using it to provide additional capacity for on large jet airframes which is an area we are increasingly focused on.”