Pilatus Constructing First U.S. Paint Facility

Twenty-five years after establishing a completions center at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, Colorado, Pilatus Business Aircraft is constructing its first paint facility there. The 28,455-sq-ft facility will include a down-draft paint bay, a cross-draft paint bay, and a dedicated preparation bay.

Pilatus v-p of marketing Tom Aniello told AIN that while the completions center does interior fabrication and installation for the Swiss airframer’s aircraft destined for North and South American markets, the company didn’t have a facility to apply a base coat of paint over primer nor add the final customer-specified striping scheme. Instead, the base coat of paint was generally applied at Pilatus’s Stans, Switzerland factory and third-party contractors in the U.S. applied the final striping.

“The decision to build our own paint facility was based on limited capacity at the factory paint facility in Switzerland, the schedule restrictions and cost of utilizing third-party painting partners, and a desire to reduce the time required to deliver an aircraft to its new owner,” he said.

Operations at the U.S. paint facility are expected to begin in June 2022.