Located on the banks of the Mississippi River a short distance southeast of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area is the Red Wing Regional Airport. Owned and operated by the city of Red Wing, MN, just across the river (Red Wing Airport is actually in Bay City, WI) one of the tenants of this small town airport is the thriving private jet charter company Red Wing Aeroplane.
In the beginning
The roots of this company were not providing high-end jet charter for the rich and famous. In July 1990 father and son team Bob and Wes Converse started the company as an FAA certified repair station providing a variety of maintenance services for general aviation customers. The early years were primarily focused toward maintenance on piston engine airplanes and related accessories. Bob had his start in airline maintenance and Wes in military aircraft maintenance then the airlines. Wes eventually went on to fly for a cargo airline for a while but maintained an active part of the company.
In 2004 the company entered into the Part 135 jet charter business with one Cessna Citation. Now the Vice President of Flight Operations Wes Converse says, “As the company grew into a robust charter operation, the maintenance activity shifted away from supporting general aviation maintenance customers in order for us to support our growing fleet of Cessna Citations.”
Today’s operation
Today, Red Wing Aeroplanes operates 13 Cessna Citations throughout North America, South America, the Caribbean, and the Bahamas. The company has 80 employees with 20 pilot bases; half of these 80 employees are in the Red Wing area – a really nice economic contributor to any small Midwest town.
Chris Converse, the company CFO and son of Wes, says, “The charter model we use is a floating fleet model rather than an out and back operation. Airplanes are not based in Red Wing or really any specific location but operate wherever they are needed. We pick up trips point to point.” The first half of 2017 the Red Wing Aeroplane fleet has flown approximately 2,532 flights which included charter, ferry, and dead-head legs, and over 5,000 hours. The charter operation is also ARG/US Gold and Wyvern PASS Ready.
Due to the expansion, over the past three years they have built a new set of buildings capable of housing functions of the current operation as well as planned future growth.
Interestingly, they have done very little charter flights from Red Wing since the beginning and some out of the nearby Twin Cities.
The maintenance organization
Todd Newton, director of maintenance, says, “All of the aircraft are scheduled back into Red Wing about once per month for routine maintenance and they come back to Red Wing for all phase checks and any in-depth maintenance requirements. The only maintenance we don’t do ourselves is primarily the engine overhauls and of course some of the unscheduled items that surface while aircraft are out in the system flying.”
Newton goes on to talk about the company growth and says, “When I started with the company there were five technicians and now we have 15 and everyone works a schedule of four 10-hour days for seven-day-per-week coverage. As you can imagine the maintenance organization keeps very busy.
Newton says the technicians appreciate the variety and describes how the crew can build up wheels and brakes, do an RVSM check, work on a phase inspection, engine change, or compass swing. The majority of the work is scheduled and there are not many distractions that come with drop-in work.
Both Newton and CEO Converse feel fortunate they don’t experience some of the same employee recruitment and retention challenges felt by many in the industry these days, owing to its location, and from what I observed a really nice working environment.
Tomorrow’s organization
Wes says, “Now we are kind of going back to our roots with maintenance. After a decade of performing Cessna Citation maintenance on our fleet, we have a high level of experience on this series of aircraft. We have accumulated a large amount of tooling and specialized equipment, parts and materials, and most importantly knowledge on the Citation.”
Wes was clear they are not giving up on the light-jet charter and shared that they built their brand on reliability and customer service and now want to expand that back into general aviation maintenance customers like they did in the beginning.
Newton says of doing more outside customer maintenance, “We’ve got the manpower, we’ve got the tooling, we’ve got the experience, so now we are in a position to utilize this knowledge and support other Citation owners not just our own fleet. In the past two years we have done several Citation phase inspections for outside customers and we intend to do more.”
In May of 2016, Red Wing Aeroplane became an authorized Mooney Aircraft Service Center. They feel that Mooney maintenance is small but growing and a nice fit for them. They have about 20 Mooney customers already.
They also have a wide assortment of tooling for the typical general aviation aircraft and are able to offer aircraft weighing, dynamic prop balancing, pitot-static transponder checks, and they are an authorized installation center for Ice-Shield pneumatic deice boots.
They concluded the work is there and the time is right so they just need to go back out into the market and tell owners and operators.
Another new piece of business is a Citation simulator. The company has purchased a full flight Level D simulator and plans to bring all pilot training in-house. Part of the facility expansion will be a dedicated simulator area and the installation will begin soon. Eventually, they plan to become Part 142 certificated and offer simulator training to other operators.
Most of the maintenance training is done right at the company. They rely heavily on good old on-the-job-training, are in the process of developing a new internal Citation maintenance training program, and plan to use the new simulator for run-up, taxi, and systems training for the technicians. Newton wants to start an internship program with one of the area's Part 147 maintenance schools.
When asked what accomplishments they are most proud of, Wes commented, “It’s a good place to work and we get a lot of work done." When asked about the future he concluded they are looking at larger aircraft.
Wes still rolls up his sleeves and helps in the shop whenever needed. He commented that he’s held all but one position in the company and started as an A&P on the floor.
I should note that all but one person in the immediate Converse family works at Red Wing Aeroplane. Bob officially retired recently at the age of 87 but we all know you can’t always keep old aviators away from what they love.
