Mobile Approach Helps Young Repair Station Boost Interiors Business

A young Part 145 repair station based in Cincinnati, OH is looking to set itself apart with its unique Mobile Interior business model, which foregoes hangar space in favor of a totally mobile approach to bring down operating costs and maximize customer convenience.

Launched 2.5 years ago, AeroElite Interiors was founded by aircraft maintenance and interior refurbishment specialists from the business aviation sector. A major component of the company’s business model is to perform as a mobile interior wing for both private aircraft owner-operators as well as maintenance facilities at smaller or regional municipal airports which do not have in-house capability to be a “one-stop-shop.” According to Zach Kramer, managing director at AeroElite Interiors, this mobile approach has been popular with both customer segments.

“Often times what we’ve noticed is that—other than some of the very large MROs—some of these maintenance facilities at smaller or regional municipal airports have a great relationship with the operators that are based there, but it’s just unfortunate for them that they cannot be a ‘one-stop-shop,” says Kramer, adding that AeroElite’s approach helps these MROs compete better with larger players in the market, which is a “win-win for the industry as a whole.”

To serve as a customer’s mobile interior wing, AeroElite’s technicians bring their tooling and equipment on the road to a customer’s site—including a unique, OSHA-approved inflatable spray booth that Kramer says AeroElite “kind of Frankensteined.” AeroElite found a company that provided inflatable, drive-in booths for painting cars and converted one into a booth to spray dyes, glues paints and adhesives safely while on the road. “It’s quite a spectacle when people see that, but we can spray materials inside that spray booth and it’s all contained. There’s not going to be any overspray and, most importantly, there’s not going to be any volatile chemicals released into the atmosphere,” says Kramer.

One of AeroElite’s latest Mobile Interior projects entailed completing approximately 10 interior refurbishment items on a private owner’s Cessna Citation CJ over Thanksgiving, including re-dyeing of seats, carpet replacement and refurbishment of soft goods in the cockpit. AeroElite’s team split work between the customer’s hangar and its 10,000 ft.² facility at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, which includes capabilities such as state-of-art laser cutters and a full-service work bench.

“That convenience factor from what we’ve seen, especially for owner-operators, has just been tremendously high,” says Kramer. “They don’t have to worry about anything, it’s in their own facility and we’ve even worked with the FAA to specifically write our general operating manual to mainly include what they call Work Away work orders. Everything about being mobile is kind of written into our business objective.”

According to Kramer, AeroElite typically performs approximately 60% of interiors work at its facility and 40% at customer sites. He adds that one of the company’s most popular services is seat re-dyeing, which he says “makes seats feel and look new” much quicker than reupholstery at a fraction of the cost.

In addition to AeroElite’s private aviation projects, the company has served as a prime contractor and sub-contractor for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy, such as a recent project where it built and fabricated interior aircraft components for a weapons modification on the F-15 fighter fleet at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Kramer says the multi-pronged approach of pairing private aviation work (which is one-off and project-based) with government work (which tends to entail term contracts) has helped with scaling AeroElite’s growth. The company currently employs five full-time technicians and several contractors, but plans to double its full-time staff this year.

So far AeroElite has mainly completed Mobile Interiors projects in the central area of the U.S., but Kramer says the goal is to extend projects nationwide by the end of 2021 with 1-2 more locations at key airports.