For our Perspectives series, we talk to experienced business aviation industry professionals who share with us their individual insights and offer a window into their world. This month's interviewee is Paul Dunford, MD of international operations at Flying Colours. Bombardier has kept its facilities open during the pandemic, and the Flying Colours Asia hub is based at the Canadian OEM's Singapore service centre at Seletar. Flying Colours has a contract to provide interiors refurbishments and repairs in parallel with Bombardier's maintenance work, and there has been a continual stream of projects.

“Our Singapore team recently began work on a full cabin refurbishment for a Challenger 604. The aircraft revamp has seen the cabin completely stripped back to its bare frame to make space for a long-awaited modernisation of the interior. The redesigned interior is being outfitted with newly designed seats, new veneered cabinetry and stylish materials throughout. The new owners will also benefit from plenty of stowage space for personal items and luggage. We are beginning to regularly fulfil complete refurbs, which shows the development of the facility, which initially worked on touch ups, cabinetry repairs and minor other interior repairs. We have the full scope to complete a full refurb, which owners really value as it means they can have all maintenance and refurbishment work conducted in one place. We are excited to see Bombardier complete its new paint shop too as when complete paint work is requested an associated refurb often accompanies it.

We also worked with a local MRO facility bringing business aviation interior experience to a privately flown 747 aircraft that was being refurbished. We collaborated closely to support a carpet installation, the first of its kind for us in Asia. Maximising their combined years of experience, Too Hin Wee, the Flying Colours Asia GM, and the Singapore team are also providing additional aesthetic enhancement suggestions beyond the carpet installation. While we traditionally focus on Bombardier business jet aircraft in Singapore, our expert team’s interior knowledge spans across and into widebody aircraft. This new project could act as a springboard into further collaborations, which will deliver more opportunities for the business.

The pandemic has been mixed for us. Bombardier has been open the whole time, which has enabled us to stay open the whole way through; even our Malaysian colleagues stayed in Singapore so they could support our regular work as it continued at a steady pace. The pace of the pandemic has been different in Asia but of course it has had an effect. We are seeing some new entrants, including those that used to fly privately returning back to business aviation to stay safe, along with new owners who have not previously owned jets choosing to enter the market who want to mitigate the risk of exposure. Some customers held back work projects while others moved their schedules forward.

The greatest effect we have experienced is the delay to our expansion. In tandem with Bombardier we are expanding our facility to meet its ambitious growth plans here and due to COVID equipment has been delayed, building work slowed and the schedule stalled for a while, but we are now moving forward and hope to have our expansion begin in April, with the first of two equipment shipments scheduled to arrive in late March. Our project completion timeline is to be in the new facility for August 2021.

We are looking to keep growing our business in the region. The Asia Pacific area does not have many quality refurbishment and interior facilities, so we are keen to attract as many customers as possible to mitigate their need to fly to Europe or the Middle East for work. We actually get work from both the Middle East and Africa and will continue to pursue opportunities.

We are also exploring opportunities to collaborate with other MROs where possible in the commercial aircraft size category. We can bring very unique skillsets to these kinds of projects.”