Talking Aircraft MRO at EAA Oshkosh, celebrating 50 yearsby Editor - Daniel Brindley | August 23, 2019

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Airventure Oshkosh is celebrating 50 years! I walked around the four main hangers where all the Parts, Tools and OEM’s were exhibiting to learn more!

Lee Aerospace is a Tier 1 Window Manufacture for Cirrus,Textron Aviation, Piper, Epic and Stratos Aircraft. They also support many of the leading Third Party Service Centers and MRO facilities with full-time technicians. Talking to Malissa Nesmith, VP of Marketing and Business Development, she explained “For the first time Lee Aerospace is an authorized service provider for the EAA to polish windows here onsite at Oshkosh 2019. We also have a mobile unit for anyone that has a plane offsite that is interested in scheduling with us.” Malissa also stated the importance keeping windows clean and inspection. “Even a light scratch will damage the integrity of a window, especially with the rapid change of temperature in-flight, expanding and contracting”. Our technicians can spot compromised windows, crazing of windows (underlying cracks) that can lead to badly cracked windows mid-flight.

Aircraft Tool Supply (ATS) is an established specialist aviation tool provider whose roots are firmly established in the experimental aircraft market since 1974. Casually chatting with ATS’s President, Desmond Lynch; “The 70’s were big for the Experimental and General Aviation Aircraft. Many thirty something guys (now baby boomers) were really excited about flying and were committed to getting a kit plane in the sky,” he says. Desmond also added; “ At the time, after the Vietnam War major OEM’s (Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup etc..) were scaling down operations and decommissioning equipment & tooling, that then flooded the market. This created opportunities for entrepreneurs to acquire tooling and establish themselves in the (then) booming marketplace for General Aviation and Kit planes/ Experimental Aircraft”.

President of ATS Desmond Lynch, made the transition from the Airforce to civilian life after ten years of service and was ready to sign-up for another ten. However, his old Airforce boss came along (Owner of ATS) and made him an offer, “he couldn’t refuse,” Desmond said. Desmond started at ATS in 1992 and since then has been instrumental in growing the business to over 4k product lines. Catering to the General Aviation, Business Jet and Kit plane marketplace. I asked Desmond “the old” Pareto Principle question; “What are the 20% of aircraft tools that create the 80% of sales?” Desmond said, “there is no “20-80”, every line performs well and satisfies customer needs”. Check-out the ATS Website for a full list of tools.

Finally, I asked Desmond what was important to ATS’s success and he said, “Customer Service, we have lifetime warranties on all Pro-line Tools, we extend standard 90 day OEM warranties to one year and all sales are refundable within 30 days.