Gallery: Inside MHIRJ’s Tucson Service Center

Aviation Week recently visited MHIRJ’s 260,000 ft.² service center in Tucson, Arizona, to get a behind-the-scenes look as it prepares to start CRJ-450 conversions and launch an internal sheet metal structures training academy. The facility is keeping busy as airlines opt to keep the CRJ flying longer.

MHIRJ’s Tucson service center has around 400 employees and can perform up to 16 lines of maintenance simultaneously. During Aviation Week’s visit, the company had 13 “work in progress” aircraft on site.

The Tucson facility exclusively serves regional operators. Its primary customer is SkyWest Airlines, but it occasionally receives drop-in visits from other operators. During Aviation Week’s visit, this CRJ-700—formerly operated by Air France regional subsidiary HOP!—was spotted in the hangar. The aircraft currently is registered to SkyWest.

According to MHIRJ, more than 1,000 CRJs are currently in service. “We've seen a lot of them come out of storage here and come through our facility to re-enter service, because the airlines are very interested in continuing to operate them,” says Amanda Grizzard, MHIRJ’s director of operations and site lead in Tucson. The facility has recently focused considerably on longevity, performing 40K and half-life inspections for customers. “We have enough half-life inspections on the horizon to keep us very, very busy for many years,” she adds.

In addition to intensive half-life inspections, MHIRJ’s Tucson facility also offers aircraft bridging checks and a heavy maintenance offering called CARE that involves a pressure-form floor modification for CRJ series aircraft. Grizzard says the facility is also preparing to begin its first CRJ-450 conversion, which will reconfigure the CRJ-200 to a 41-seat aircraft with first-class seats, new overhead bins and first-class baggage storage.

Grizzard says MHIRJ is working to encourage a safety culture in which employees can share feedback. “It's anonymous, of course, so it helps encourage that, and then they get to see that we're actually taking their feedback and implementing it, and from there we do get ideas on ways that we can make things better,” she says.

One way in which employee feedback has improved operations is the implementation of upgraded floorboards in the aircraft during maintenance so technicians can walk through while the aircraft floor is removed. The facility was previously cutting pieces of plywood for this purpose, but they experienced wear and tear and shifting inside the aircraft. The new floorboards, which are color-coded by aircraft type (red for CRJ-200s, green for CRJ-700s and blue for CRJ-900s), have new stripping on the bottom to hold them securely in place.

MHIRJ’s “Bay of Excellence” concept, which aims to drive continuous improvement to reduce distractions and wasted time in the hangar, is also being implemented in Tucson. These custom racks for various parts are visible throughout the hangar. Grizzard says the practice has “done a better job of protecting the components that we remove from the aircraft from damage, because the racks are nice and organized and properly configured to hold some odd-shaped and sized things. They're mobile, so we can easily move them around when we need to reconfigure aircraft.”

One employee idea implemented at the facility is a training heads-up display located near the materials storage area that displays relevant training information. “When [employees are] standing here getting materials, they can come and read about the repair station manual updates or scissor lift pointers,” says Grizzard. 

The materials storage area mainly houses lower-value components and consumables. MHIRJ also has a 110,000 ft.² aircraft parts distribution center in Haltom City, Texas. “We coordinate very closely with SkyWest to get parts from them, so they’ll purchase from our distribution center and then we’ll purchase from them to support their maintenance visits,” says Grizzard. 

This template is a stencil employees use to cut out CRJ-200 “moonmats,” which are galley flooring designed to provide traction to cabin crew while in flight.

Tucson is preparing to launch Wings Academy, its internal structures academy modeled after MHIRJ Academy in Bridgeport, West Virginia. The 13-week program offers paid sheet metal structures training and has been incredibly popular in Bridgeport, helping the company overcome the challenge of finding qualified structures technicians.

Wings Academy is scheduled to start with its first cohort of 15 students on Aug. 24. A second cohort of 15 will run later this year.