Midcoast To Offer Narrowbody Completions

Midcoast Aviation recently announced its intention to move into the “narrowbody” cabin completion business, marked by groundbreaking on a 145,000-sq-ft hangar at its St. Louis Downtown Airport facility. The hangar is expected to open for business next summer and add at least 200 employees to Midcoast’s staff of 1,100. According to Midcoast president Kurt Sutterer, the growth was prompted by demand for large executive-configured aircraft in the A318/A319 and BBJ class. The market for narrowbody airliner-based executive airplanes has grown 15 percent annually over the past four years, said Sutterer. In the past, Midcoast has focused on midsize to large business aircraft interiors, from the Hawker 800 and Falcon 50 through the Global Express and Gulfstream G500. The announcement came two months after parent company Jet Aviation revealed plans for a $29 million, 377,000-sq-ft hangar in Basel, Switzerland, that will simultaneously house an Airbus A380, a Boeing 787-8 and “a number of midsize aircraft.”