North Carolina Facility Finds Niche in Corporate Market

By: David A. Lombardo

December 1, 2008
Maintenance and Modifications

When he bought Profile Aviation on Hickory Airport in North Carolina in August 2007, Riverhawk Aviation chairman and CEO Cal Humphrey saw an opportunity to offer maintenance services for older aircraft on the eastern seaboard. At the time, he was operating a company in San Antonio called Riverhawk Aviation that bought and sold aircraft and parts. He combined the two companies and moved to the North Carolina facility, which had the location and assets to serve the market.

Riverhawk Aviation is qualified to work on anything from a Cessna 152 through the Learjet 60. The company is also a service center for single-engine Cessnas and is currently expanding its avionics capability.  

“This was a mom-and-pop operation when I bought the company. My vision was that the commuter airlines would one day be recognized as a profit center for the major airlines because they needed them to support growth. It makes the regionals a strong potential market for maintenance,” he said. “We’re also seeing the same opportunity in the corporate market as used corporate jets become available.

Profitable MROs begin with the capability of servicing different types of used corporate turboprop and jet aircraft after the warranty expires. We saw an opportunity and stepped in.”

According to president and general manager Mike Humphrey, Cal’s son, “We initially didn’t put a lot of emphasis on looking for business as we are the only MRO on the field and were doing a lot of work for Nascar teams,” he said. “Earlier this year we decided to take the business to the next level. We created a customer service position and hired Chad Gant. He oversees quality control, meeting product delivery dates, getting the job done as agreed and overall customer satisfaction.”

Humphrey said he emphasizes keeping customers informed. In addition to hiring Gant, the company has also integrated Total FBO software into the MRO program so customers receive their bill when they pick up the aircraft.

Most of the company’s 10 mechanics have been employed for between five and 20 years. “We just had one retire at age 65 who’d been here since 1970,” Humphrey said. “We have a great, family-oriented community located in a beautiful part of North Carolina not far from Charlotte. Despite the economic downturn, we’ve been able to attract top quality people here. In the past six months we’ve added four new people to the MRO portion of the business and six new pilots.” Overall, the company has increased its employee count by about 30 percent in the past year and seen a 10-percent increase in business from its based aircraft customers in the past six months, in addition to an increase in business from operators based elsewhere.

Service Expansion Planned
“By creating a positive customer experience we have had to expand our hours of operation twice this year,” he said. The company had been operating from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. “Demand has been significant enough to expand our hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and seven to five on Friday.”

Humphrey said the company has established a sound relationship with the airport authority, which has been enhanced by bringing more business to support airport operations.

“We have no airline operations into our airport and we’re the only operator on the field, so we have a significant impact on the airport authority’s income,” he said. “We hangar about 60 aircraft at our facility. We have seven 12,000-square-foot corporate hangars, one 15,000-square-foot hangar and three open hangars. We have a solid base but lately we’ve begun attracting new business from as far away as Florida.”   

Cal Humphrey is focusing on expansion through acquisition of FBOs, MROs and on-demand charter services. In March, Riverhawk acquired Carolina Air Charter of Charlotte, N.C., an on-demand FAR 135 charter company. The company is also working on developing additional OEM relationships to become authorized service providers, especially in the area of avionics.  

“We’re looking toward investing in underdeveloped FBOs located near major metropolitan population centers,” he said. “We intend to extend our services into other geographic regions as we expand into a national network of FBO facilities. We are currently scouting for a smaller FBO within about a 500-mile radius of Hickory.

Riverhawk Aviation currently has about 172,000 sq ft of hangar space, maintenance and office facilities, with significant room for expansion on the airport. Riverhawk Aviation retains inventory-management specialists who are trained and authorized to ship hazardous materials. Overall, the company is staffed by a team of more than 40 people, consisting of pilots, mechanics, ground crew, administrative and executive personnel.

The company’s expertise includes Beech-craft 1900, King Air (all series), Learjet (all series) and Cessna Citation 500 series. Maintenance technicians attend regular training with both FlightSafety and SimuFlite.  

The FAR Part 145 repair station is certified to do phase inspections; airframe repairs; annual and 100-hour inspections; engine exchanges; NDT inspections; an altimeter, static, transponder system test; and service and repair for Bendix/King, Collins and ARC avionics. Engine maintenance expertise includes Lycoming, Teledyne Continental, Garrett, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney Canada. Currently the company’s workload mix is about 35 percent jet, 35 percent turboprop, 25 percent piston single and 5 percent piston twin.

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