Sabreliner Further Expanding its Southeast Missouri Operations

October 28, 2008

With the recently-approved lease of city-owned hangar space at Perryville Municipal Airport, Sabreliner Corporation continues to expand its operations in Southeast Missouri, bringing its area manufacturing, repair, overhaul and storage space to more than 390,000 square feet.

The company has agreed to a 10-year lease with the city of Perryville for the former fixed base operation at the airport, including 10,000 square feet of high-bay hangar space and 3,600 square feet of office and storage space.  Other area Sabreliner operations are in Ste. Genevieve and St. Mary.

The additional airport space will be used initially for the company's A-4 aircraft restoration work, according to Ron Herman, senior vice president, operations.  The company is rebuilding to flying condition a group of mothballed Douglas A-4L Skyhawk attack aircraft for a private company that plans to lease them to various branches of the U.S. military for training.  The aircraft, which were widely-used in the Vietnam War, had been stored in the desert for nearly four decades.

In Ste. Genevieve, Sabreliner recently purchased a 40,000-square-foot building on Trautman Industrial Drive, adjacent to its current operation at 1040 Rozier St.  Sabreliner purchased the one-story building on July 31 and is making improvements needed for it to begin operating as an assembly center this fall.  

The company is gearing up to manufacture replacement rudders for the U.S. Air Force KC-135 aircraft and is moving its P-3 center wing assembly and tooling work from Perryville to the newly-acquired Ste. Genevieve building, concentrating all of its aviation assembly work under one roof there.  The move will free up space in Perryville for Sabreliner to expand its growing T-34 and new T-44 aircraft condition inspection and repair work.  Sabreliner's Ste. Genevieve operation now totals 156,608 square feet.

At its St. Mary aerospace manufacturing center, Sabreliner recently completed construction of an additional 8,844-square-foot expansion and is making it fully operational, with the installation of two new computer numerically controlled (CNC) three-axis mills and the relocation of three existing CNC mills and a CNC lathe into the new space.  With the recent addition, the St. Mary operation has 33,248 square feet of manufacturing space.

Sabreliner continues to expand its workforce in southeast Missouri.  For the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, the number of company employees in the region increased from 297 to 345.  

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 nearly 400 employees and more than 400,000 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.