Wichita MRO Looks to Future With New Hangar

Mid-Continent Aviation Services (MCAS) is a few months away from completing a more than $5.7 million hangar project at Wichita Eisenhower National Airport (KICT) that will give the MRO provider much-needed space. “We are coming down to the finish, which is great,” MCAS director Kelly Lousch told AIN. “We have a roof. The wall structure is up. I think the long pole in the tent right now is the hangar door itself, which is expected to be delivered at the end of April.” The hangar is expected to be operational this July, Lousch added.

Continued growth at MCAS during its 12 years in business is the reason for the new hangar. “We have outgrown this space with the way that our business has been expanding,” she said. “We historically have taken care of small piston and turboprop and light jet aircraft. We have just effectively grown into a market where we’re dealing with larger aircraft and servicing more customers.”

MCAS announced the project at the 2021 NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas; plans also call for doubling its workforce of 23 employees. The 31,500-sq-ft hangar includes 5,000 sq ft of office space and replaces 8,500 sq ft of hangar and office space that the company razed earlier last year. With a 35-foot-high ceiling at the peak and a 26-foot-high door, the hangar will be large enough to accommodate A-checks on Part 121 aircraft, which could be an avenue for future growth at MCAS. “We expressly decided to go high just to not limit the possibility of anticipated future growth, as Eisenhower Airport grows as well,” Lousch said.

In addition to the new hangar, MCAS operates from nearly 33,000 sq ft of hangars and offices at KICT. A Part 145 repair station, MCAS provides maintenance, repair, and overhaul of business jets, turboprops, piston airplanes, and rotorcraft, with a specialization in Hawker 800 series and 4000, as well as Beechcraft Premier jets. Besides Hawker and Premier jets, its airframe capabilities include Cessna Citation 500 series as well as 650 and 750 twinjets, Beechcraft King Air series turboprops, Beechjet 400/400A, Hawker 125 series midsize twinjets, the Kodiak 100 turboprop single, and Robinson R44 and R66 helicopters. MCAS’s engine maintenance capabilities include Pratt & Whitney’s PT6A and the Rolls-Royce RR300. “The customer base itself is pretty loyal, so we will expand capabilities based on what our customers are requesting of us,” Lousch said.

MCAS also stocks and locates hard-to-find legacy aircraft parts inventories. The company is an outgrowth of the flight department of Colwich, Kansas-based ICM Inc., which formally established MCAS as an MRO in 2010 by securing an FAA repair station certificate.