CAVU: All Airplanes Go to Heaven

When an airplane reaches the end of its life, it’s usually dismantled.

When leasing companies don’t have time for the dirty work, they turn to third parties. In Arkansas, there are few choices. That’s where Stuttgart’s CAVU Aerospace Inc. comes in.

CAVU, which stands for Ceiling & Visibility Unlimited, is a reference to the company’s tag line: "The Vision is Clear." CAVU started in 2010, formed by Bryan Hancock, Shawn Vaughn and Ken Kocialski.

(Click here for a sidebar on Bryan Hancock.)

"We buy and sell commercial aircraft and dismantle them for parts as well," Hancock said. Hancock previously worked for Universal Asset Management Inc. of Memphis at its Walnut Ridge facility. He now manages CAVU’s warehouse in Stuttgart.

Vaughn managed a commercial teardown facility before he came to CAVU, where he now leads the company’s teardown team. Kocialski handles CAVU’s sales and marketing side from his base in Phoenix.

The company’s services are all tied to the purchase and sale of aircraft parts, typically through the dismantling of aircraft.

CAVU’s teardown service has two components: fixed base and mobile base. The fixed base is for planes that can still operate. Clients can fly them right into CAVU’s headquarters at the Stuttgart Municipal Airport.

"We first inspect it visually, all the way around," Hancock said. "Then we start the process of defueling and getting all the hydraulic fluids drained, then we start our process of taking out certain sections of the aircraft. The team works around the clock until it’s all done."

The dismantling process starts at $25,000 for regional airframes, $35,000 for narrow-body airframes and $65,000 for wide-body airframes.

Hancock said the CAVU team can dismantle a Boeing 737 that seats more than 200 passengers in a week if the weather’s good. The mechanics, Hancock added, all have Airframe and Powerplant certifications.

"This is what they’ve come to work to do," he said. "Some items are harder to pull off than others, but that’s part of the job – watching those guys that do it, they make it look like it’s easy."

For clients with inoperable aircraft, the CAVU team can travel almost anywhere. This is the mobile base half of the dismantling service.

The team packs its equipment into a couple trailers and drives across the country. To date, the team has gone as far as the Mojave Desert, and Hancock said overseas travel is possible, too.

Hancock said the day-to-day business is like most salvage type of work. An aircraft, after 25 to 30 years of use, is usually ready to be retired and salvaged for parts.

"The parts on a commercial aircraft are constantly changed out, overhauled and reworked," he said. So the parts themselves "are not worn out. We take all of those parts off and have them re-inspected and overhauled by an FAA-145 repair station. Then we sell those parts back into the industry."

CAVU’s 20,000-SF warehouse is lined with huge shelves of disembodied aircraft pieces: hatches, landing gear, hull pieces. At the time of Arkansas Business’ visit, it was enough equipment to constitute five full aircraft.

Hancock said business has been "great." The company employs 10 workers and had a top line of about $2.5 million in 2011, its first full year. Hancock hopes it will grow as more clients sign on.

Greg Guzman, owner of AeroStar Inc. of Mobile, Ala., is a client of CAVU.
"I’ve never seen somebody get off the starting line and accomplish their goals as fast as they did," Guzman said. "For a young company, they’re doing extremely well."

Branding
Kocialski said he’s marketing CAVU as unique in the aerospace world.

"I think what we have is innovative," he said. "It’s a new program. There are a lot of similarities you find with different companies out there trying to do the same thing."
CAVU’s approach is different, Kocialski said. The company follows the process "from the second the aircraft becomes decommissioned to the moment the last part sells." It’s called RAMP, "Recycling & Asset Management Program."

"What we’re trying to get out there is a design program," said Kocialski, "a recycling program designed to take end-of-life recycling out of the hands of the airlines and leasing companies."

Kocialski said he wants to help airline companies wring more dollars out of aircraft that have stopped generating airfares.

CAVU, Kocialski said, is intended to be a one-stop shop for airlines that need fast dismantling and parts turnaround. The components are quickly filtered back to parts brokers who market to the airlines.

CAVU doesn’t have much competition in Arkansas. Uni-versal Asset Management disassembles aircraft at a facility in Walnut Ridge, but part of its operation was moved to Tupelo, Miss., after Walnut Ridge’s airport commission determined that the huge Boeing 747s were damaging the airport’s ramp and taxiways.

Other than UAM, the nearest similar business is Aviation Repair Technologies of Blytheville. Its main service is heavy maintenance, but it also performs aircraft disassembly and the purchase and sale of parts. Like CAVU, its team travels out of state for teardowns. But Vice President and General Manager Rick Uber said that service constitutes only 15 percent of ART’s business. He considers CAVU more of a peer than a competitor.

"This is a small industry," he said. "There are a whole lot of pieces to the pie. At one time or another we’ll probably work together with CAVU on a project."