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buy another airplane. When it became necessary to raise maintenance rates to generate profit, customers found it a difficult pill to swallow.
Sturm navigated the treacherous waters, though Flight- craft scaled back from its high of as many as six locations to its then two-facility status, with operations in Portland (PDX) and Eugene (EUG), Oregon. Sturm secured Cessna Citation service center status, and revenues from the four main lines of business roughly started to break out as 35 percent for tech support, 30 percent for line service, 20 percent for sales and brokerage activity, and the remaining 15 percent from charter and aircraft management income.
After the sale to Dean Papé, the company started an ag- gressive expansion that would result in Flightcraft FBO and maintenance facilities in Portland and Eugene, Spokane and Seattle, Washington, and Hayward and Oakland, California. Over time, the company sold off all but the Portland and Eugene FBOs. A new FAA tower, parking garage, and canopy over drop-off lanes were completed in 1999.
Brent Fraser, Flightcraft’s general manager, took a job with Flightcraft as a mechanic in 1999, but after about a year, moved for a position as a mechanic managing aircraft for ACM Aviation in Silicon Valley. He remained there until 2009. “I always kept my eye on Flightcraft because I felt it had significant potential,” Fraser said.
By 2011, Atlantic Aviation had acquired Flightcraft and rebranded its FBO businesses. However, the maintenance
side of the operation retained the Flightcraft name. They wanted to build a future-proof business, and Brent Fraser was again back to lead the way. Flightcraft built new hangar facilities and left the 1950s-era wooden arches behind them.
According to AIN at the time, Fraser said, “Through conversations with colleagues, I became aware that Atlantic Aviation wanted to strengthen and build the main- tenance, repair and overhaul portion of the business, so I aggressively approached them about playing a key role in that effort. I always loved the area and the company; I watched them for 10 years waiting for such an opportunity to arise,” he said.
“The day I walked in the door, my singular goal was to make Flightcraft the only show around.” To do that, Fra- ser drew on his experience as Hawker crew chief at the KC Aviation facility in Westfield, Massachusetts, during the 1990s. He told AIN, “I was part of an aggressive program that saw that business grow from 10 employees to several hundred. It was done by extremely hard work, never saying no, and with the determination that if we weren’t able to specifically help a customer, we made sure to find a way to get it done.” He employed the same strategy at Flightcraft and “the growth we’ve experienced to date underscores its importance.”
Through Fraser’s leadership, Flightcraft has grown from its two locations in Portland and Eugene to include another facility at BFI, Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington. BFI was established to serve a market of fleet operators, but techni- cians from Oregon can travel to Seattle to take care of any needs at any location.
Currently, Flightcraft maintains classic Dassault Falcon jets and Textron Aviation’s King Air and Citation lines. Fraser said, “We’ve done more than just expand our capa- bilities to service Falcons, we’ve brought some of the most knowledgeable technicians available to lead the way. We offer full capabilities to keep any flight department in the air. We support our customers through decades of combined skills to give you unmatched quality in work, pricing and on-time delivery.”
In addition to Falcon support, Flightcraft is a Textron Aviation authorized service center (ASC) and a Citation certified repair station with AOG support all day, every day. Their team are experts with the 500 series Ci- tation line having more than 20 years of Citation-heavy maintenance experience.
It is evident that now, just as in the 1940s, that Flightcraft is a shining example of innovation and determination. Through ownership changes, market changes and industry changes, the leaders at Flightcraft made the right decisions and found new avenues to success, solving problems in unique ways. That is actually the definition of innovation.
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20 • TWIN & TURBINE / June 2022
Lance Phillips is an aviation professional, writer, pilot and photographer. He is executive director for the Pinnacle Air Network and owns Phillips Aero Services, an aviation mar- keting services provider. You can contact Lance at lance@ phillipsaeroservices.com.