Page 23 - Volume 16 Number 4

Keeping Your
CABIN
LeRoy Cook
Up To Date
AvFab Provides Interior Options
Some 25 years ago, the father and son team of G.R. and Jeff Lowe started Aviation Fabricators because they saw there was an underserved need for supplying interior items for cabin-class airplanes. When a seat frame broke down or a table no longer folded, few options existed other than to go back to the OEM, who might not be able to support the older design. Today, AvFab has over 100 STCed products, predominantly for Beechcraft King Airs and Cessna Citations, but also for many other corporate aircraft types. The company is always looking for more opportunities in the interiors business.
AvFab is not a completion center or refurbishing shop. Instead, it supplies solutions for such businesses, and for customers seeking to upgrade their aircraft, by building new seats, divans and lounges, as well as repairing items no longer serviceable. So respected are its products that many of them go into brand-new aircraft for specialized missions.

When we visited the company’s headquarters in Clinton, Missouri, located almost exactly in the center of the U.S., we asked AvFab V.P. Jeff Lowe how the business began. “It
started with a three-place divan for Beech King Airs,” he related, “and just grew from there.” The side- facing seat added extra capacity and served an unmet need, and one thing led to another. It wasn’t long before stocks of new and used seating and other interior items, like toilets and refreshment bars, were added to the offerings at sister company, Central Airmotive, which serves as a parts house. Out in the Central Airmotive warehouse, we saw racks and racks of seating, dividers, side panels and cabinetry; airframe salvors typically concentrate on easier-to-store engines and airframe components instead of the more-fragile interior items.
APRIL 2012
TWIN & TURBINE 21