This year marks multiple milestones for Prince Aviation, a full-service company in Serbia that traces its roots back to the former Yugoslavia. The business aviation services firm started 35 years ago as a small aircraft operator based in a hangar it rented from Yugoslav Airlines at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport.
In addition, 2025 is the 20th anniversary of the start of Prince Aviation’s maintenance division, which the company first developed to handle its own aircraft fleet. Over time, the company gained valuable experience and a unique perspective as it extended its support outside its own organization.
“It put us in a really good mentality and approach that we are respecting the customer and their operations,” said Djordje Petrović, the company’s COO. “The maintenance facility from that moment was developing a wider scope.” The facility—now a full-service MRO—received its EASA Part 145 maintenance certificate in 2012.
Last September, the company opened a new 32,290-sq-ft maintenance hangar next to its original 8,600-sq-ft facility. It is equipped with a heated floor, climate control, and—like many aircraft hangars—a “Big Ass Fan.” “We had a couple of occasions of our technicians going to the United States to support some projects, and they saw (the fan) and were slightly jealous, so when we were building the facility, we wanted to please them,” joked Petrović.
Now with the ability to accommodate 15 aircraft at a time, this has allowed Prince to quadruple its capacity to more than 100 aircraft projects a year. “This is one of the biggest improvements that we made,” Petrović told AIN. “With the previous facility, the slot availability was around two and a half to three months. With the addition of the new facility, we have shortened that period to a one-month backlog.” He added that 80% of his company’s clientele are repeat customers.
While the new hangar can handle ultra-long-range business jets, the MRO’s focus is on Cessna Citations, and it recently expanded into legacy Dassault Falcons such as the 50, 900, and 2000 models, mirroring the composition of its Cessna/Dassault charter fleet.
Among its capabilities are avionics upgrades; the company is an authorized dealer and installation center for Collins Aerospace, Garmin, and Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics. To demonstrate its expertise, last year it performed a glass cockpit retrofit on a Citation CJ—the oldest jet in its fleet—installing Garmin’s G600 displays and GTN 750 touchscreens.
Prince also performs satcom installations, with its venerable CJ serving last May as the global premiere platform for the Collins IRT NX system. It followed that up in January with the first-ever installation on a Citation XLS, also one of its own fleet aircraft, which it showed off at Aero Friedrichshafen.
In terms of structural repairs, the company recently performed one of the most involved projects on a Citation outside of the Textron subsidiary’s Wichita factory. It involved the replacement of the entire belly skin on an XLS due to corrosion caused by a lavatory fluid leak. Requiring 7,000 hours of work, the job involved the complete removal of the jet’s interior, engines, and wings, along with reinforcement of the pressurized fuselage.
The facility can also handle cabin refurbishments, and a rented third hangar on the field (6,500 sq ft) is configured as a paint shop for the interior and exterior painting of aircraft up to midsize jets. Among its authorizations, Prince is a Pratt & Whitney designated maintenance facility, one of seven in Europe, as well as a Textron Aviation authorized non-destructive testing facility.
In terms of AOG, Prince has a dedicated team with 24/7 dispatch and has sent its technicians to Asia Pacific and South Africa. Depending on the urgency of the situation, the company can use its own aircraft fleet for transport, and it maintains a spare parts inventory of €2.5 million.
Because Serbia is not a member of the EU, the company employs two full-time customs agents to handle the acceptance and shipping of parts and supply packages. For AOG response, the MRO has dedicated customs pre-cleared toolkits for technicians to grab and go without delay. It aims for dispatch within half an hour of receiving a call.
To maintain its safety standards as it expands, Prince recently announced that it has become the first business jet company in Europe to implement Snap-on’s automated Level 5 Tool Control System for managing aircraft maintenance tools.
The MRO has a staff of 110 employees, including 70 full-time technicians, half of whom have been with the company for a decade or more. While the labor pool of mechanics is tight throughout most of the industry, Prince has a strong pipeline with its own EASA Part 147 training school, and it also accepts 10 to 15 apprentices a month from the nearby aerospace vocational high school. The company has established a unique mentorship program for its technicians nearing retirement age and beyond. They are assigned the less complicated maintenance jobs so they can focus on overseeing and instructing their younger, newly-hired colleagues.