Doug Bohac, Duncan Aviation’s Enterprise Paint Manager, has seen lots of change in his 37-year career. The recently announced groundbreaking for a new paint hangar with two cross-draft bays at our Lincoln, Nebraska, facility will be the fifth paint hangar construction Doug has witnessed. He saw the first paint expansion in Lincoln in 1990, and had a role of increasing influence and responsibility in the development and planning of paint expansions in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 2007; Lincoln in 2012; and Provo, Utah, in 2019.
“I never would have imagined the growth I have seen in Duncan Aviation or in my career when I started in the media blast shop or even as a paint sander or paint technician,” Doug says. The glamour of painting jets attracted Doug to aviation from his first professional job in an auto body shop. “I love what I do because of the people I work with and the customer and industry relationships I have built.”
The New Paint Hangar
The $25 million greenfield hangar build will include a new 32,500-square-foot, dual-bay paint hangar with an adjacent 9,000-square-foot storage and support area. The building will connect directly to Duncan Aviation’s existing paint facility and will have site development including expansion of the ramp.
The cross-draft bays will feature modern climate-control, and the facility will expand and upgrade our waste water treatment for the complex, add air showers to contain even more contaminants, and provide a small application booth for send- in parts like flaps and thrust-reversers.
The facility will also be more energy-efficient, recirculating up to 80% of the heat in any curing processes. In addition, the interior hangar panels and ceiling will be stark white, allowing for better color quality control during paint application.
The facility was designed and engineered by longtime Duncan Aviation partner Tectonic Management Group, Inc. and will be built by Hausmann Construction.
In December, footings for the building will be poured and steel will begin arriving on-site. Construction is expected to be complete by January 2026.
Greater Flexibility
“The driving factor for the hangar build is flexibility, not capacity,” Doug is careful to point out. The Lincoln facility paints roughly 105 aircraft each year and Duncan Aviation paints 250 aircraft enterprise- wide. “We won’t be painting more aircraft in Lincoln. However, we will be able to offer clients better flexibility, especially those who want detailed, more intricate paint schemes that require more than one paint slot to complete.”
The new facility will allow us to support customers as they move into aircraft models as large as the G650, 10X, and GL- 7500. It will also allow us more flexibility to support unscheduled and drop-in work like paint touch-up, registration number changes, and other paint needs with shorter lead times.
Once the new facility is open, we will decommission Lincoln’s Paint Bays 1 & 2, the same ones Doug first saw built in 1990, and repurpose that space to support the overall needs of the organization. The 45,000-square-foot paint facility he helped build in Lincoln in 2012 will continue to serve customers for many years to come.