TWC Finally Lands at Van Nuys Airport

TWC Aviation has moved into its new facility at Van Nuys Airport after having outgrown its long-time home at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. The charter and management firm will be better able to serve clients with aircraft based at the Valley airfield and offer maintenance services to outside aircraft owners. The design of the two-story building on Roscoe Boulevard was done to fit in with other nearby structures and looks more like a modern office building than a hangar. At 18,000-square feet the office space is more than double the Burbank location and includes a kitchen, passenger lounge, and pilot rooms. “When we designed the kitchen we made it large enough so the flight crews could have the room to prepare meals prior to the flight,” said TWC President Andrew Richmond. The new hangar is 11,000 square feet larger than what was available at Burbank. TWC manages 23 aircraft that are spread between Van Nuys and other locations in California and Arizona. TWC changed locations in response to requests from aircraft owners who preferred being at Van Nuys over Bob Hope. The Valley airfield had closer freeway access to the west side of the city where many clients are based, plus at Van Nuys the private aircraft would not have to deal with the commercial traffic found at Burbank. The new location will also open up a larger market for FAA-authorized maintenance services to aircraft owners other than their clients, Richmond said. The original completion date for the building had been in July 2007 but construction and other delays pushed that date up to more than a year later. For one, the property changed hands when the original lease holder Million Air got bought out by Maguire Aviation. Plus, oversight of the project fell under both the Los Angeles city government and Los Angeles World Airports. “Those two (the city and LAWA) had to resolve their own issues before we got our approval,” Richmond said. For years, new construction had been placed on hold at the airport while a new master plan setting out the zoning for airport property was worked out. After the completion of the document in January 2006, owners moved ahead with construction plans. Maguire is currently building new hangar and office space that had been started by Skytrails Aviation until that charter company was acquired this year by Maguire. Keck/Aerolease completed work this year on new hangar space; Pentastar Aviation has plans for a new building on 14 acres on Roscoe Boulevard nearby to TWC; and Castle & Cooke Aviation Services is negotiating with LAWA on a lease for a new fixed-based operation on the 7-acre Jet Center property at 16200 Daily Drive.