Nearly 60, KCAC Aviation Continues To Spread Wings

It was back in 1966 when Kansas City Aviation Center (KCAC Aviation) first opened its doors as a Piper Aircraft dealer. In the nearly six decades since, it has grown into a full-service FBO offering aircraft maintenance, charter, and management services, in addition to aircraft handling. The services provider has been under the same ownership for the past 34 years.

Occupying nine acres at Johnson County Executive Airport (KOJC) in Olathe, Kansas (home of Garmin), the FBO’s 19,000-sq-ft terminal dates back to the 1980s but has been expanded and renovated numerous times, with the latest improvement coming just a few months ago. The large lobby was recently refurbished with all-leather seating and new tables.

In addition to housing the company’s offices, the building features a kitchen area, dining area, refreshment bar, and recliner-equipped pilot lounge with quiet area and shower facilities. There is an eight-seat conference room, with a slightly larger one across the ramp in the sales building.

In the nearby maintenance hangar is a fully-equipped gym that is accessible by customers. Onsite car rental is available, as are courtesy cars for use by crews and passengers alike. With Kansas City barbeque a popular choice for catering in the area, the FBO has several favorite restaurants ready to sling some ribs and sauce for customers.

At the complex is 135,000 sq ft of heated hangar space that can accommodate aircraft up to a midsize business jet. Of that total, 72,000 sq ft is dedicated to aircraft storage. The FBO is home to 25 turbine-powered aircraft, ranging from a Cessna Citation Sovereign+ to a Piper M600 turboprop single and a handful of helicopters. Ten of the airplanes are on KCAC’s charter certificate. “We’re pretty much at capacity all the time,” said general manager Tony Mateer. “Fortunately, a lot of my charter airplanes are out flying so it gives us room to put the transients in a hangar.”

A Phillips 66 branded location, the FBO—which is open every day from 5 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. with after-hours call-out available—has a fuel farm with a capacity of 18,000 gallons of jet-A and up to 24,000 gallons of avgas, although Mateer admits the demand for the latter rarely justifies the topping off of that tank. It is served by two 3,000-gallon jet refuelers and one 1,200-gallon avgas truck, handled by the company’s NATA Safety 1st-certified line staff.

Mateer told AIN that his facility, with its staff of nearly 100 among all its divisions, handles 10 to 15 aircraft a day and last year pumped approximately 600,000 gallons of fuel. One of two service providers on the field—which started out as an auxiliary airfield for the U.S. Navy in World War II—KCAC claims the lion’s share of business at the dedicated general aviation airfield, according to Mateer. He added that the length of the 4,100-foot runway can lead to a potential dip in activity on the field around this time of year. “We’re a fairly short runway, so if there is any snow or ice around, the bigger aircraft are going elsewhere.”

In late December, Olathe was hit by a blizzard. “I had facility and line guys here for 54 hours straight trying to keep our parking lots and ramp space cleared,” recalled Mateer. “It was bad enough that our airport was shut down for three days because they couldn’t get the ice off the runway, but our ramp was clear.”

Not forgetting its roots as an aircraft dealership, KCAC is still an active Piper sales outlet and has since added Pilatus aircraft sales. The company also operates an FAA Part 145 repair station with an avionics shop. It is in this segment where Mateer sees growth.

“The maintenance business has become so competitive, and it’s tough for aircraft owners to get in because everyone is just slammed with maintenance work,” he said, adding that he receives calls every day from aircraft operators who can’t schedule their aircraft for work in their home areas, forcing them to look for slots further afield.

“Our main maintenance functions are Citations of various sizes because we operate them, and we’re also very involved in the [Pilatus] PC-24 and PC-12, and then as well we’re a Piper dealer, so Pipers.”

To help alleviate that maintenance backlog, KCAC will inaugurate a new $6 million, 30,000-sq-ft maintenance hangar in April. “I told the owners that as soon as this one is done, I want to start talking about the next one,” said Mateer.