The Middle East region ranks high alongside Asia and North America as key markets for Canadian completions specialist Flying Colours, which characterizes MEBA as “the perfect event.” Making its third appearance here, Flying Colours (Stand 452) is not showing an aircraft, but has a customized exhibit to promote its completions, refurbishment, and maintenance services.

The company hopes to receive United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) maintenance-service approval next year, according to sales and marketing executive vice-president Sean Gillespie. Its application for such follows recent receipt of Qatar CAA approval to offer base and line maintenance on Qatar-registered business aircraft and earlier similar clearances covering machines registered in Saudi Arabia, Cayman Islands, and Isle of Man. The QCAA status enables it to undertake continuing airworthiness and maintenance work on aircraft, including all those under its Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) approval, among which are the Bombardier Challenger and Global Express, and Dassault Falcon families.

Flying Colours is currently performing maintenance on a Qatari Bombardier Challenger, the second of several aircraft for a charter operator in the region, which follows earlier work on a Global Express that was completed in July. Gillespie declined to provide details of the overall work package or schedule, but made no secret of the company’s desire to provide heavy maintenance, cabin interior, paint, and avionics services sufficiently competitively to “lots of customers” to justify Middle Eastern aircraft being flown to Canada.

Elsewhere in the region, Gillespie said that Flying Colours is talking to “a number” of operators that could become customers for business-aircraft special-missions role conversions. It has delivered a special-missions Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) ExecLiner conversion to Eagle Aviation in Sharjah (UAE), following a four-month refurbishment to convert the ex-U.S. airline aircraft, which now offers dedicated or combined VIP-charter and medevac options. Gillespie claims “great feedback” from Eagle Aviation about the aircraft's first 12 months’ service: “It’s doing well.”

The executive said that the past 12-18 months has seen better trading conditions in the Middle East region: “The previous five years, the services market had been up and down. Now, we’re having more discussions that we’re hopeful will continue.”

Africa also represents a “very active” region for Flying Colours. “We get a lot of inquiries, mainly from [operators in] Nigeria,” for which the company has already re-configured a Challenger 604 and a Learjet 35. Most recently, it has had a Nigerian contract for heavy maintenance and major refurbishment on a Challenger 604 and also has been working on CRJ that will be “re-delivered” to the western African country by year’s end.

For Flying Colours, the special-missions epithet mainly covers VIP, commuter, or medevac services or “combi” mixed-role operations. It recently recruited more engineers for its U.S. design center in St. Louis to consider Challenger-, CRJ700- and 900-, Global Express-, and Learjet-based models that could be offered to meet military requirements. Defence variants could see Flying Colours adding exterior modifications to its cabin-interiors portfolio, with aircraft configured for, say, maritime surveillance operations, according to Gillespie.

Earlier this year, the company completed the first part of a three-phase expansion plan that added a [U.S.] $3.5 million, 20,000-sq-ft hangar extension at its Ontario, Canada headquarters. “Completion of this first phase underpins our international strategy for growth,” explained Gillespie. The space can handle avionics installations and upgrades, full interior completions, and heavy-maintenance and refurbishment projects.

Subsequent phases are planned for 2015 completion, the extra 45,000-sq-ft capacity incorporating an additional hangar, increased maintenance and interior workshop space, and new paint facilities. This will allow Flying Colours to accommodate Airbus ACJ, Boeing Business Jet, and Bombardier CSeries aircraft. Next, the company plans to explore expansion options at St. Louis. The company performs all Challenger 850 “green” completions on behalf of Bombardier and has delivered more than 20 examples of its CRJ200 ExecLiner corporate conversions.