MRO Profile: Wisconsin Aviation: 45 Years and Counting

Wisconsin Aviation is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. The company, which now operates MRO/FBOs at three airports in the Badger State, made its debut at Watertown Municipal Airport (KRYV). “I started this in 1981, when interest rates were 21%,” said company president and CEO Jeff Baum. “The economy had fallen off the cliff—of course, we didn’t know that because we didn’t have CNN, let alone the internet—and two weeks later, President Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers. So, it was a great time to start an FBO!”

Despite that rocky beginning, Baum grew the business, which also provides aircraft management, charter, and flight instruction. The company became the lone service provider at Dodge County Airport in Juneau (KUNU) two years later, and added a facility at Dane County Regional Airport-Truax Field (KMSN)—serving the state capital of Madison—in 1994.

Combined, the three facilities offer 170,000 sq ft of hangars. At KMSN, Wisconsin Aviation’s largest maintenance facility has 12,000 sq ft of dedicated maintenance space, an 8,000-sq-ft FAA Part 145 avionics shop, and 1,600 sq ft of offices and labs. Watertown has an 8,000-sq-ft maintenance hangar, a 1,200-sq-ft interiors shop, and 1,600 sq ft of offices. Dodge County—the smallest of the three—has a 4,800-sq-ft maintenance shop. “These are just the maintenance facilities; we use spillover hangars also,” Baum told AIN, adding that all three of the locations work together for the end result of satisfying the customer.

With a maintenance backlog extending out more than two months, he noted the shops are always full. At Madison and Watertown, that equates to about eight airplanes each, while at Juneau, there are usually three under maintenance at a time.

“There’s always others in the other hangars waiting for parts to come in or owner approvals or whatever the case might be,” said Baum. “It’s just nonstop. Being the sole provider of services at three FBOs, you can imagine the number of AOG aircraft and aircraft that have problems.” At KMSN, the company also provides 24/7 on-call support for the airlines, a sector that is seeing continued growth.

A high point in the year is the annual EAA AirVenture show in nearby Oshkosh. It provides a surge in activity, with as many as 1,000 aircraft stopping at its locations, some of them staying longer than expected due to mechanical problems.

While it prefers to work on aircraft at its facilities, the company will occasionally respond to situations at nearby airports. “Do we go off field, yes, but we don’t advertise that,” Baum explained. “That’s not our core business to run out to other airports, but if anybody has a problem, we can try to help them.”

The company is a Textron Aviation authorized service center for the OEM’s pistons and turboprops, as well as a large maintenance center for Cirrus Aircraft’s SR-series piston-engined airplanes. With a managed fleet of 14 airplanes ranging from a Piper Seneca up to a Cessna Citation 560, the company—which expects to receive its FAA Part 145 repair station authorization later this year—will work on anything up to midsize jets. Wisconsin Aviation has operated Citations in its fleet for nearly 30 years, and Paul Boucher, the company’s v-p of technical services/head of maintenance, was previously responsible for the operation of four Citation service centers. It can perform annual inspections or anything else, short of engine overhauls, which it will farm out to a specialist.

Among its operations at the three locations, Wisconsin Aviation’s staff tallies around 180, with two-thirds based at Madison. The company runs one long maintenance shift, with work starting around 5 a.m. and running to late afternoon.

Baum describes the technician labor market as extremely tight, but “improving slightly.” To bolster its talent pipeline, the company strives to have one or two apprentice trainees per location at all times. “In Madison, some of the people that we have started on our line have migrated into maintenance, much to the dismay of our line department,” he said.

While the work is steady year-round, Wisconsin’s harsh winters tend to place a damper on flight operations in the region. “You have to know that the airports are open, you have to know that the runways are not contaminated for jet aircraft, because it poses a significant safety issue,” Baum explained. “It’s a hardship; people don’t want to go out and pre-flight their aircraft when it’s 10 degrees below zero.”

Wisconsin Aviation has had expansion plans in the works for the Madison facility since before the Covid pandemic, and Baum is presently in negotiations with the airport on a lease renewal. “We have another very large hangar that’s under design right now, and the rehabilitation of another major hangar,” he said. “We need that lease extension to make sure we can amortize a multimillion-dollar expansion.”