Sept. 30--NS Aviation LLC officials want to make it clear that the aircraft-maintenance company is not a Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Instead, they consider the Winston-Salem company a "startup hybrid," a competitor less than two years old, but with collective industry expertise running well into the centuries.
Company officials said the average work experience of its 110 employees is about 25 years.
The company does business as North State Aviation at Smith Reynolds Airport. It operates on a monthly lease for 80,000 square feet, including 50,000 square feet of former Pace Airlines Inc. hangar space, at 4001 N. Liberty St.
On Sept. 20, the company announced a multiyear contract with United Airlines that is projected to add at least 40 full-time employees by year's end, bolstering its workforce to about 150. It has pledged to add 308 employees by January 2015 as part of an economic-incentive package.
The company provides two lines of maintenance and retrofit work on United's Boeing 737-900 fleet, with each line having about 45 to 50 dedicated employees. The new contract could double the number of lines NS Aviation provides for United maintenance and retrofitting work.
"Even though as a company we're new, the customers we're serving, they know we've done this before successfully and effectively," said Charlie Creech, NS Aviation's president.
"The contract with United not only shows their confidence in our work, but brings us more credibility in the industry."
NS Aviation management officials acknowledge -- reluctantly -- that Pace is part of their story.
Most of them were in similar roles with Pace when it was owned by the estate of Bob Brooks, chairman of Hooters of America Inc.
After their own offer for Pace was turned down, they were purged when William Rodgers Sr. took over Pace in May 2009. Rodgers' acquisition was based on a promissory note to pay $9 million for stock in Pace Airlines LLC and Pace Airlines II LLC and take over $6 million in liabilities.
The company collapsed less than four months later, putting 423 employees, including about 300 locally, out of work.
Creech and Russ Kota, vice president of maintenance, said their departure, and then the collapse of Pace, fueled their desire to create their own maintenance company.
However, they stress that the lineage and culture of North State stretches back to Piedmont Airlines and its halcyon days as a community and business anchor.
In other words, Creech says, judge the company on how it performs compared with Piedmont's legacy rather than a defunct Pace.
Other management officials are: Joel Marion, sales and marketing director; Tom Chappell, vice president of business development; Stan Haines, chief financial officer; and James McPhail, chief operating officer.
"Unlike when we were here with Pace, where we had limited control, the management team has a significant financial and emotional investment in this company," Kota said.
"Like Piedmont, we believe in taking great care of the customer," Marion said. "You do that best by taking great care of the employees."
That message resonated with many former Pace employees, who represent the bulk of the new NS Aviation hires despite being burned by the Pace collapse.
"It's a blessing this management team decided to open business here and begin to re-create the Piedmont culture," said Jim Walton, a 40-year industry veteran who worked for Piedmont, USAir and Pace.
"I have great confidence in them and that we'll be here for a long while. The United contract shows that one of the world's largest airlines does, too."
Chappell said many former Piedmont and Pace maintenance workers commuted to where they could find work.
"But Winston-Salem remained home because of the sense of community that Piedmont created here," Chappell said.
"Part of our satisfaction in establishing North State and returning to these hangers is enabling some of those employees to come back home to work."
Even though NS Aviation launched with a big splash in January 2011, complete with a celebratory appearance by Gov. Bev Perdue, company officials knew they faced a daunting challenge with its ambitious plans.
The company pledged the new jobs will pay an average wage of $42,072 -- $80 more than the average in Forsyth County. It would spend nearly $1.3 million on capital investments.
In return, the state made the company eligible for a $300,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund. It also benefited from a $500,000 grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation to the Airport Commission of Forsyth County for airport infrastructure improvements.
NS Aviation kept a low profile while picking up business from about a dozen companies that include Miami Air and Arik Air, a Nigerian commercial-passenger carrier.
"We landed 12 very good customers, working on at least 30 different aircraft, since we opened for business because they know the quality of our mechanics and maintenance crews," Creech said.
Creech said it took about 18 months "to crack the egg with United."
NS Aviation officials said it took that long in part because United needed time to integrate its acquisition of Continental Airlines. United officials could not be reached for comment.
Continental was the biggest maintenance customer of Pace. The pulling of its contract in August 2008, in disagreement with Rodgers' management and financial moves, doomed the struggling company.
However, Continental officials made it known at that time it had no problem with the quality of Pace's workforce.
Chappell, who worked for Continental when Pace collapsed, knew that Smith Reynolds' central location on the East Coast and lack of commercial airline flights would be appealing to domestic airlines choosing to outsource more maintenance work.
"Once we got in with the right people at United and they heard our story, they gained confidence in our ability to do quality work on time because they know this workforce had done it consistently and effectively for years," Creech said.
A recent tour of NS Aviation's hanger found a United Boeing 737-900 ER aircraft -- "the flagship of the airline's 737 fleet," Chappell said -- being up-fitted with TV screens in the headrest so passengers can watch live broadcasts through DirectTV.
The project also required installing antennas that are required to rotate 360 degrees to follow the GPS signal of the DirectTV satellite. The aircraft was scheduled to be back in service early this week.
"We can handle three of those projects a month, or 36 a year, each taking between seven and 10 days to complete," Marion said. "We can also do what we call 'drop-ins' for maintenance with our other regular customers."
Other Smith Reynolds Airport tenants include Landmark Aviation, Piedmont Aviation Components and Piedmont Propulsion Systems LLC.
But having NS Aviation as an anchor tenant provides more financial security to the airport given the absence of Pace lease payments the past three years.
Mark Davidson, director of Smith Reynolds, said the airport commission is negotiating with NS Aviation for a longer-term lease in part because of the United contract.
"They had developed a niche providing maintenance on large aircraft for charter airlines to stay operational," he said. "With this contract, they will have a regular stream of business and revenue."
Copyright 2012 - Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.
