AAR Opens New Oklahoma City Hangar Amid Continued Expansion Drive

AAR Corp. has opened its new Oklahoma City airframe MRO facility to support expanded Boeing 737 heavy checks for Alaska Airlines, and it plans to begin operating from its Miami facility expansion in July. As it grows its physical footprint, AAR is also rolling out its paperless initiative and integrating operations from its recent acquisitions.

The new 80,000-ft.² hangar at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City can accommodate three narrowbodies and was purpose-built to be tall enough for Boeing 737 MAXs, which are taller than earlier 737 models. AAR expects to induct the first Alaska aircraft in March for a C check.

“In order for us to go into a new location or expand in a location, three things have to be true,” AAR Chairman, President and CEO John Holmes tells Aviation Week. “One, we have to have a friendly environment with the airport, and we sure do in Oklahoma. Two, we have to have confidence in the availability of labor, and we have some of our very best people and have for decades in Oklahoma. And three, we’ve got to have a long-term commitment from a customer, and Alaska is our longest-term heavy maintenance customer. They’ve been with us for more than 20 years and having them sign up to take the space was critical.”

Holmes says AAR has made good progress on hiring the 200 additional staff it plans to bring on to support the expansion. “We’ve got an experienced team already on-site, and we’ll take that experience and ultimately flow it to the new people that we’re bringing on board,” he says. AAR has been leveraging workforce partnerships across its network to attract talent to Oklahoma City, including its apprenticeship programs, the Choose Aerospace high school program and the aviation curriculum it launched in partnership with Olive-Harvey College in Chicago.

The Oklahoma City facility will also focus on the rollout of AAR’s paperless product, for which the company has invested “several million dollars.” Holmes says AAR is the first third-party MRO to go totally paperless.

“Airlines themselves have gone paperless, but it’s different for an airline to go paperless because they’re within their own environment. They’re working only on their own aircraft, using only their own procedures and requirements,” he says. “We had to develop a system that would work across lots of airlines and meet multiple requirements.” AAR’s system is now being rolled out across its sites in partnership with its airline customers.

AAR’s Miami expansion is also seeking operational efficiencies. Previously, the location relied on off-site storage for parts, seats and other items, but the expansion will include a new warehouse between its existing hangar and a new three-bay hangar that will allow it to keep everything on-site, “which is way more cost effective,” Holmes says.

Despite delays that pushed back construction by six months, Holmes says the Miami facility is on track to be fully operational by July. “Like Oklahoma, that work is already sold and that space is already sold,” he says.

Meanwhile, AAR is also focused on integrating its recent acquisitions, including HAECO Americas and Aircraft Reconfig Technologies. “There are a lot of moving parts right now, so our No. 1 goal is to make sure that we execute on that well, and I’m confident that we will,” Holmes says.

Although the HAECO integration will be complicated and AAR has “had to make some difficult moves to adjust the workforce, the new level of volume [and so on],” he says, “it’s going very well. It’s just a matter of implementing those processes, the systems [and] paperless, for example, and bringing the operational rigor that we have in our other sites to their site.”

Holmes notes that “the pacing item” for the HAECO integration is AAR’s exit from its Indianapolis facility, but he expects the timeline to take between 12-18 months.