Tulsa Airport Seeks Plan to Aid Growing Firms

"The first phase, which we hope to start construction on in 2006, will be to build three hangars connected to Tinker by a tow way," Carter said, referring to a roadway on which aircraft are towed between the facilities. "Each hangar will accommodate wide-body aircraft."

In Tulsa, American Airlines also projects a need for an additional wide-body hangar, said Carmine Romano, American's vice president of base maintenance. American employs 8,000 people in Tulsa, including 6,000 aircraft mechanics.

"This time next year, I'll be out of space," Romano said. "We're doing more and more third-party work for Synergy Aerospace out of Bogota (Colombia). We've been meeting with the Tulsa Airport Authority about our short-term needs and long-term needs."

Under an agreement announced last spring, American is performing heavy maintenance checks and modifications of 29 Fokker F100 aircraft owned by Synergy Aerospace.

The deal, which American executives said is worth "tens of millions of dollars," is counter to trends in the airline industry, which is outsourcing heavy maintenance. American executives hope to turn their maintenance bases in Tulsa, Fort Worth and Kansas City, Mo., into profit centers.

Spirit AeroSystems Inc., a division of Onex Corp. of Toronto, is a subcontractor for Boeing Co., its former parent, and it also is courting third-party work at its Tulsa plant. The facility employs 1,100 people.

"In the future, it's very probable that we'll need more space," said Don Carlisle, general manager of the Tulsa division. "There's a lot of new activity in the industry and a need for more planes."

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