TULSA—American Airlines plans to add a widebody maintenance hangar at its Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tech Ops center as part of a $550 million investment.

The $550 million is the single largest investment that the airline has made at a maintenance location and will fund building the widebody hangar in Tulsa as well as updating the rest of its hangars on the 80-year-old base.

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said that the Tulsa maintenance base is a “critical part” of the airline and the investment reflects that. He pointed out that American has invested $20 billion in fleet renewal the last 5-6 years and upgrading this facility is necessary to keep up with the fleet.

Construction of the 193,000-sq.-ft. hangar, which will accommodate two widebody aircraft or six narrowbodies, will start in early 2021 and is scheduled to take about 18 months to complete. After its completion, hangars three and four will go offline because they can no longer accommodate the size of American’s aircraft. 

The other hangars and infrastructure will also be updated—including new roofing, IT upgrades, fire suppression control and ramp repairs. All of these changes will take seven years and will be outlined in master plan that the base will start working on soon.

Craig Barton, American Airlines VP technical services said the Tulsa base changes will give the airline flexibility to “manage the mix” of narrowbody and widebody aircraft and what maintenance is done in-house and what is outsourced. American said it completes more maintenance in-house than other U.S. carriers.

Tech Ops Tulsa maintains more than 900 aircraft annually and is American Airlines’ largest maintenance base facility.

American also operates maintenance facilities at its Dallas headquarters as well as in Charlotte, North Carolina and Pittsburgh.