Gallery: Inside AeroTEC’s Moses Lake Flight Test Center

Engineering services provider AeroTEC operates a Flight Test Center from Moses Lake, Washington where it offers a range of testing, engineering, modifications, maintenance and certification services. Aviation Week visited the facility to get a first-hand look at some of the unique aircraft development and services projects the company is working on.

As an FAA Part 145 certified repair station, AeroTEC operates three hangars in Moses Lake, including a 32,000 ft.² narrowbody hangar, a 65,000 ft.² widebody hangar, and its newest 85,000 ft.² widebody hangar, which opened in 2021. It primarily focuses on modifications work, but also offers A and C checks, heavy corrosion inspections, non-destructive inspections, lease returns and reconfigurations, battery repair and other maintenance services as a supplementary business.

According to AeroTEC CEO Lee Human, the company is different from a typical MRO provider because it focuses on special mission and “one-off” aircraft that wouldn’t typically be profitable for most MRO providers that are focused on quick turnarounds. He jokingly describes its MRO business as “the island of misfit airplanes.” These types of specialized aircraft are often more complicated to maintain, requiring special handling, tooling and a higher level of disassembly for maintenance without the benefit of clearcut maintenance manual instructions. Because of this, AeroTEC often works on-site with customers’ maintenance staff.

AeroTEC has several trailers on site that can be configured specially for customers so it can work closely with relevant experts on various aircraft projects.

AeroTEC’s narrowbody hangar will be used for modifications work on some of its upcoming and ongoing hydrogen and electric propulsion projects, including MagniX and NASA’s De Havilland Canada Dash 7 hybrid-electric aircraft and Surf Air Mobility’s electric Cessna Caravan.

This Cessna Citation CJ4 was on-site for a business jet program AeroTEC is working on. AeroTEC found the aircraft, leased it and, during Aviation Week’s visit, was preparing the aircraft for tests. In these types of situations, aircraft receive a temporary “experimental” airworthiness certificate. Once projects are complete and it is time for a lease return, AeroTEC works with designated airworthiness representatives to make sure aircraft are airworthy and maintenance is up to date.

On the airfield outside AeroTEC’s hangars, there are still quite a few parked Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. The company is helping Boeing with its 737 MAX return to service activities from one of its widebody hangars.

Aside from its maintenance and modifications work, a large portion of AeroTEC’s business in Moses Lake revolves around flight operations and engineering. It operates two telemetry rooms, as well as a remote telemetry trailer, which are used to remotely monitor flight data during tests. Having multiple telemetry rooms enables it to run tests on multiple aircraft simultaneously.

AeroTEC offers a significant amount of test instrumentation capability as part of its flight testing operations. Pictured here is an area housing instruments that collect data during tests. AeroTEC is able to reconfigure these instruments for different requirements.

AeroTEC also manufactures a variety of flight testing components and equipment on-site. Pictured here is its flight test manufacturing area, which is used for individual part manufacturing and part build-up.

AeroTEC manufactured and was preparing to ship these orange water ballast systems for a customer. The systems are used as a way to load aircraft without having passengers on-board so the center of gravity can be moved from the control system during flight.

The crust on these composite winglets is artificial ice designed and built by AeroTEC for ice accretion flight testing. During testing, AeroTEC must determine an aircraft’s full capabilities during an icing encounter, so these types of models help it perform analysis to determine how ice forms, freezes and grows.

Pictured here is a De Havilland Canada Dash 7 wing and nacelle section purchased by AeroTEC to help perform reverse engineering for analysis and testing on its MagniX projects. Human says there are no CAD models for the Dash 7’s parts due to the aircraft’s age, so it scanned this wing and nacelle section and took samples from the materials to create a digital model.

In addition to AeroTEC’s Moses Lake facilities, it also operates a manufacturing center in Arlington, Washington and engineering facilities in Seattle and Wichita, Kansas. The Arlington facility focuses on FAA-approved production parts while the Moses Lake facility primarily focuses on manufacturing of flight test and support equipment.