A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in 2007, Curt came to&nbsp;the publication&nbsp;from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;sister publication&nbsp;Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s&nbsp; Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with&nbsp;Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

Senior Editor

Curt Epstein

Fargo Jet Center (FJC) at North Dakota’s Hector International Airport (KFAR) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, but while the company has offered aircraft maintenance and special mission outfitting and modification since it began, it only of late has had a dedicated-purpose built facility in which to handle those operations.
Last <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2024-09-27/fargo-jet-center-debuts-major-expansion-kfar">September</a>, the company inaugurated its $25 million, 112,000-sq-ft expansion that had been under construction since 2022. It features 50,000 sq ft of hangar space surrounded by 30,000 sq ft of workshops specifically designed to support FJC’s MRO business, including a composites work area, sheet metal fabrication, welding shop, and avionics shop.
“One of the things that is really nice in our new facility is we’ve got the overhead crane,” said Mike Clancy, the company’s v-p of technical services who has been with the company for more than a quarter century. He noted that it enabled FJC to perform its first float-to-landing gear swap on a Cessna Caravan last year. “It brings a lot of safety to what we do with engine changes and so forth.”
With 30-foot-high doors, the facility—part of FJC’s 14-acre campus—can handle the latest ultra-long-range business jets. Its approvals include FAA Part 145, <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2020-06-10/fargo-jet-center-earns-easa-part-145-nod">EASA Part 145</a>, and Transport Canada, and FJC is an authorized service center for Textron Aviation’s turboprops including the King Airs and Caravans, as well as the Pilatus PC-12, the Daher Kodiak, and Cirrus Aircraft.
“As a service center for the different platforms, we’re required to have factory-authorized training for a minimum number of people for each model,” Clancy told AIN, adding that he has an event-based contract with FlightSafety to provide that training. “The company is committed to sending people to training on whatever model aircraft we happen to be servicing on a regular basis.”
Altogether, that amounts to approximately 200 aircraft including customers, FJC’s own charter fleet, flight school, and those of sister company Weather Modification International, according to Darren Hall, the company’s v-p of business development who has been with FJC for nearly three decades. The MRO has a staff of 50 and can work on anything ranging from single-engine piston aircraft up to airliners.
FJC is the only maintenance provider for the airlines that fly into KFAR, and its staff is on call 24/7 to handle AOG issues there and at other airports in the region. While single-aisle airliners such as the Airbus A320 are too large to fit into the company’s hangars, repair work is conducted on the ramp, using tents to shelter the affected areas.
The MRO can handle a wide range of maintenance work such as mandatory airframe checks and engine inspections. It specializes in teardowns on the ubiquitous Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada PT-6 turboprop powerplant and is an authorized hot-section service center. Its avionics shop is authorized by the major OEMs including Garmin and Honeywell for repairs and installs. FJC’s engineering division is currently working with an airborne connectivity hardware provider to develop a <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2024-07-24/fargo-jet-center-stellar-blu-partner-isr-comms">new antenna</a>. The MRO recently purchased a Citation Encore+ to use as a testbed for the modification and installation process. It has also worked with Daher to bring a retractable surveillance camera mount for the Kodiak utility single-engine turboprop to market.
Approximately half of the space in the new maintenance center is devoted to FJC’s special mission completions work. Since it began operations in the mid-90s, the company has completed more than 140 conversions for missions ranging from air ambulance to cloud seeding and atmospheric research, to reconnaissance and surveillance.
Clancy told AIN&nbsp;that the facility—with its one-shift staffing—has a three-month backlog for scheduled maintenance and 15 to 20 aircraft in the shop at any given time. Yet while it now has the space to accommodate them, the company faces another limitation. “We’re fighting the same battle everyone else in the industry is,” said Clancy. “There’s more work than there are people. I would hire 10 to 15 guys right now if I could find them.”
To help remedy that situation, FJC has nurtured relationships with the local aircraft maintenance schools, along with a robust internship program that it has stepped up over the past several years. “You can go be a maintenance intern and end up sweeping the floors in the shop,” said Hall. “We really focus on getting the interns integrated in the shop working on aircraft, so when they go back to the school they become our advocates and talk about how positive the program is.”
The pipeline has been successful, according to Hall. Of the four interns in last year’s class, three have committed to working for the company after graduation, while the fourth is still considering. “Internship is a key resource for us to grow,” said Hall. “It gives the student the opportunity to see what we do in this part of aviation, and it gives us a chance to evaluate them.” Among the recent enhancements to the program, FJC has instituted a $15,000 tuition reimbursement.

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