From building ethanol plants to tearing down jet engines

Mid-Continent Aviation Services was born out of the 2008 financial crisis.

Six years after its incorporation, the FAA-certified repair station and Quest Kodiak dealer on the east side of Wichita Eisenhower National Airport has reached profitability.

And owner Dave Vander Griend is using that profit to invest back into the seven-employee business, including a $750,000 renovation of its facilities – now in its second and final phase – and the hiring of key leaders to drive the company’s growth.

“We made huge progress from the beginning, where you had to support it on a monthly basis, to where it’s self-sufficient and making a profit on its own,” Vander Griend said. “That, in my view, is a very huge step that took time.”

If Vander Griend’s name is familiar, it’s because he’s the founder and chief executive of ICM, a Colwich-based designer and builder of ethanol plants across the country.

Mid-Continent’s roots are with ICM. It served as ICM’s corporate flight department, providing pilots and maintenance for ICM’s fleet of seven airplanes.

Then the financial crisis hit in the fall of 2008.

“We went from building a new ethanol plant every month to not building one in three years,” Vander Griend said. “When it stopped in 2008, it’s like you just turned the faucet off.

“Consequently, (we) were sitting here with a flight department with a Citation (business jet), four (Cessna) Conquests and two (Cessna) 310s.”

Within a year, ICM’s fleet was whittled down to two airplanes, Vander Griend said, and so was the work for its pilots and maintenance technicians.

There were two choices for the flight department and its remaining technicians: close down or try to make a go of what was left as an aircraft maintenance business capable of working on business jets, turboprops and piston airplanes.

“I told them that I am with this for the long haul,” Vander Griend said, adding that the less-than-a-handful of remaining employees needed to do their part, too.

“You need to do the quality work and build the clientele,” he said he told them.

“And they are doing their part.”

Mike Nordhus was among those employees to make the transition from ICM to Mid-Continent. He said building a clientele was accomplished one new customer at a time – starting with ICM – and with word-of-mouth help from them and some former colleagues.

“Some of the former ICM pilots who moved on helped us quite a bit in that aspect,” said Nordhus, Mid-Continent’s quality assurance inspector.

‘Strategic and valuable’

While Mid-Continent was building its maintenance business, it became an authorized service center and later an authorized dealer for Quest Aircraft, a Sandpoint, Idaho, manufacturer of the Kodiak single-engine turboprop airplane.

The utility airplane’s attributes include its ability to take off from and land on unimproved runways less than 1,000 feet long, and with a 3,500-pound useful load.

The $1.9 million, 10-seat airplane can be configured for cargo or passenger operations. It is also offered in an executive package called the Summit.

“Picking up the dealership was also strategic and valuable to get done,” said Vander Griend, who was a shareholder in Quest until about two years ago.

Mid-Continent’s sales territory for Quest encompasses Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. It also works directly for Quest with missionary organizations that operate a Kodiak.

In all, the company has delivered five Kodiaks, Mid-Continent general manager Joel Mugglin said.

Quest delivered its first Kodiak in 2007, and through the third quarter of 2016, it has delivered 187 of the airplanes. Just last month, Quest took its largest fleet order for the Kodiak: 20 planes for a customer in Japan.

Mugglin, who joined the company in August after nearly 17 years at Textron Aviation Cessna, including in business development and product marketing, said one of his priorities is to grow Kodiak sales, especially in Texas, where he thinks the opportunities are significant.

“It’s good territory,” he said.

‘Good conclusion’

Mugglin is one of three managers that Vander Griend identified as key to doubling Mid-Continent’s business in the next five years.

The others are Pete Galusha, director of maintenance and a former Beechcraft field service representative, and John Young, director of aviation sales and the company’s newest hire.

Vander Griend said Mid-Continent had to get its “sea legs” under it – and turn a profit – before he could afford to assemble the management team, of whom Galusha has been there the longest.

“You want to grow the business, but you’ve got to have enough business to justify (hiring) the leadership that’s going to grow the business,” Vander Griend said.

It’s the management team, he said, that’s going to help Mid-Continent become a service center for Robinson Helicopters, expand its aircraft sales and explore offering additional services such as nondestructive testing.

This week, Mid-Continent expanded its hangar space by securing leases on 7,600-square-foot and 12,600-square-foot hangars just north of its building.

“That’s roughly double what we have now,” Mugglin said.

Also key to further growing the business are updated facilities. That included a renovation of the company’s 7,500 square feet of offices at 1600 Airport Road earlier this year, as well as refreshing the building’s two, 10,000-square-foot hangars.

Work on that renovation is nearly complete. Mugglin said he hopes renovation of the last of the two hangars will be done as early as next week.

Galusha said that before the renovations, the facility did not necessarily convey a favorable impression to people bringing their $3 million jets in for maintenance.

“We’re coming to a really good conclusion of a long process of getting this facility up to date,” he said. “And to have an owner that understands that and is willing to invest to give us a shot at it is nice, too.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2016 at 5:57 PM with the headline "From building ethanol plants to tearing down jet engines."