Sabreliner Corp. Named Lockheed-Approved Supplier for Chemical Processing

June 23, 2009

Sabreliner Corporation's aerospace manufacturing center has been designated by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. as an approved special processor for aviation components.

The designation is the result of extensive audits and on-site visits by Lockheed Martin and allows Sabreliner to conduct approved non-destructive inspections and apply a range of chemical cleaning, coatings and paint to parts at its St. Mary, Mo. aerospace manufacturing center. Sabreliner currently manufactures parts for the Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion aircraft, but the certification allows the company to process parts for use on other Lockheed Martin aircraft, both for components made by Sabreliner and those manufactured elsewhere.

Sabreliner already is authorized by Lockheed under an exclusive license agreement to manufacture and assemble the Center Wing Assembly and other components for use in the U.S. Navy’s fleet of P-3 Orion maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft.

The lower Center Wing Assembly forms the bottom of the aircraft fuselage where it is joined to the wings, and measures more than 10 feet by 10 feet and weighs 500 pounds. With the addition of the Lockheed Special Processing approval, Sabreliner can now perform 98 per cent of the entire P-3 center wing assembly work internally and reduce schedules and reliance on outside processors by several weeks per assembly.

In the past, Sabreliner purchased nine large machined aluminum planks that comprise much of the assembly, but the company now machines and processes all of them at St. Mary, where its processing center is located. Assembly occurs at Sabreliner’s aerospace production assembly center in nearby Ste. Genevieve, Mo.

In addition, Sabreliner builds much of the tooling being used by various P-3 depot operations centers to perform wing repair, restoration, removal and replacement. The wing dimensional special tooling is 50 feet long with hard points located by laser tracker coordinate measuring equipment. Fuselage shoring fixtures have individual load cells to ensure that maximum loads for the fuselage are not exceeded at any shoring location.

The company recently began work on P-3 Special Structural Inspection Kits that depot centers will use to repair and replace components in known high fatigue areas, allowing the aircraft to continue to operate safely.

Those and other parts now are approved for inspection and processing at St. Mary under the special processor certification. Processes covered by the certification include magnetic particle and penetrant inspections, chemical film processing to prepare parts for painting, priming and painting of parts, the application of fuel tank coatings and aluminum heat treating. Lockheed Martin suppliers in need of these services can access Sabreliner’s capabilities at www.lockheedmartin.com/suppliers.

Sabreliner Corp. is a proven provider of a wide variety of civilian and government aviation services, as well as an acknowledged leader in aviation production support. The company has 450 employees and more than 425,000 square feet of aviation maintenance, manufacturing, processing and repair facilities at three service locations in Missouri and one in Kansas. Its headquarters are in St. Louis.