Winter Windup: Change of Season Spurs Fleet Availability for St. Louis Area Aviation Service Providers

By Carmelo Turdo

The Aero Experience regularly visits our sponsors at St. Louis area airports to gather feature story material about these great aviation companies for use in future posts. While on site, we often capture some behind the scenes views of the essential maintenance and flight operations that make our aviation community function. As winter turns to spring, long-term maintenance projects are concluding, and fleet expansions are reaching the flightlines. Here we include some examples from Creve Coeur Airport and Spirit of St. Louis Airport.

Creve Coeur Airport, Maryland Heights, MO

The Gateway Youth Aeronautical Foundation took advantage of the poor weather this week to accomplish a 300-hour/12-month inspection on their Bell Helicopter 206B (TH-67) in preparation for the upcoming summer flying season. The aircraft supports the Foundation's STEM outreach program at events around the region. Here we show Faith Ortega, A&P/IA, inspecting the tail rotor assembly assisted by Foundation President Joe Steimann and Pilot/CFI Nick Hisserich.

Gateway Flight Training has recently added a Cessna 310 multi-engine trainer and cross-country rental aircraft to their fleet. During our visit, the aircraft was undergoing a thorough inspection prior to entering service. The Aero Experience will have more coverage of this aircraft, and a flight review of their Cessna 182 Skylane, coming soon!

Piston Aviation continues to grow at Creve Coeur Airport, offering a mix of modern LSA trainers along with a selection of legacy Cessna and Piper aircraft. Here we feature our visit to the PistonLive online ground school studio and lounge after a Cherokee flight recovers to the fuel pumps. PistonLive offers a free trial and a wide selection of topics covered through interactive, online sessions with Piston Aviation CFIs. Their Bristell and Tomark Viper LSAs are some of the most modern training aircraft in the area.

Spirit of St. Louis Airport, Chesterfield, MO

Wings of Hope World Headquarters is home to the administrative staff, Medical Relief and Air Transport (MAT) fleet and the maintenance services essential to aircraft operations. Our recent story featured a more detailed tour of the Wings of Hope hangar, and here we include another look at the MAT fleet - Piper Navajo and Piper Senecas - and Cessna 206 utility aircraft. Also included here are aircraft donated to Wings of Hope to raise funds through sales and raffles. Spring raffle: Socata TB10 Tobago; sale aircraft: 415C Ercoupe and Cessna 150.

Elite Aviation, the area's premier flight school and maintenance service, offers an expansive fleet of late model Cessna 172 Skyhawks on the airport's north apron. Our brief visit shows the morning flightline and launch of the first two flights of the day. Along with the selection of Skyhawks (conventional and G1000-equipped), Elite Aviation offers a Piper Turbo Saratoga high-performance/complex trainer and cross-country cruiser and the Tecnam P2006T multi-engine trainer. We will have more coverage of the Tecnam multi-engine training program coming soon!