Gallery: Inside FEAM’s New Cincinnati Hangar

FEAM Aero cut the ribbon on its new maintenance hangar at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) March 28. Aviation Week got a look inside the new $40.2 million facility, which will more than double its capacity at the airport.

First announced in 2022, the new hangar is FEAM’s second maintenance facility at CVG. The 150,000 ft.² hangar features three widebody bays. The center bay can accommodate a Boeing 777 aircraft and the other two bays can accommodate 767- or Airbus A330-sized aircraft.

FEAM is currently installing an artificial intelligence-powered camera system at the facility that will help it improve safety and security. Once installation is completed, the facility will have between 60-70 cameras that can monitor activity ranging from employee uniform compliance up to potential risk avoidance, such as alerting staff to unsafe activities like a technician working at height without a harness.

According to Joseph Hernandez, FEAM’s vice president of technology, the cameras will also be able to perform heat mapping of the hangar’s maintenance bays to see how much usage they are getting so the company can better strategize hangar capacity. Hernandez says FEAM has also installed Wi-Fi in the hangar and on the ramp to enable technicians to use iPads during maintenance activities.

Although line maintenance on cargo aircraft has traditionally been FEAM’s bread and butter, Chief Strategy Officer Dan Allawat says the new facility provides opportunity to expand capabilities. “Eventually, with the amount of facilities here, we’re going to get into much heavier maintenance than we have in the past,” he says. “We haven’t done C checks at CVG but that’s an eventuality here in this [facility]. We’ll have to develop all the back shops to support that.” He adds that the company is still figuring out how to configure back shop and office space at the new facility.

While Allawat notes that the industry has seen a slowdown in cargo conversions, FEAM is confident that demand will continue to grow at CVG. “The initial customers in the hangar are the big cargo-based customers, but we’re very open. There’s a lack of hangar capacity for heavy maintenance and there’s a lot of one-off opportunities today that people are looking for—such as leasing companies—because the big MROs are sold out for years in advance,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of requests early on for that kind of stuff, so we think we’re going to fill that niche in between the bigger MROs. We’re a line maintenance provider, so there’s a lot of opportunity evolving into base maintenance.”

When FEAM first started work at CVG in 2015, it had 10 technicians on staff. Now, it employs around 300 staff at the facility and plans to add more. “The work we win will drive the headcount,” says Wayne Sisson, FEAM’s chief operating officer, but he estimates the company will hire between 200-250 new staff to work at the new hangar.

FEAM has several workforce pipeline initiatives in place to recruit new talent, including its 50-50 joint venture with Epic Flight Academy to establish a new aircraft mechanic school (rendering pictured here) at the airport. The school just received FAA Part 147 approval and FEAM is working closely with it to provide employment paths for students. It is also partnered with Orion Talent and Veterans Alliance to help military veterans with aviation maintenance experience transition to the civilian workforce.