This month Kansas City Aviation Center will open its second FBO and maintenance facility in a new building that it purchased at Spirit of St Louis Airport in St. Louis. “We’re setting up an expanded operation in St. Louis called Midwest Aviation Center,” said general manager Angelo Fiataruolo. The building, which KCAC bought from Spirit of St. Louis FBO Thunder Aviation, features a 30,000-sq-ft, two-level office and a large hangar that will house Midwest Aviation Center’s Piper and Pilatus PC-12 sales and service centers. The St. Louis operation is part of the company’s expansion strategy, which calls for buying or building FBO/ maintenance centers at key airports within its nine-state Pilatus sales territory, including Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Fiataruolo, former CEO of Pilatus’s U.S. operation, said that PC-12s continue to sell in high numbers. He expected KCAC last month to earn an STC for installation in the PC-12 of the Universal Avionics EFI-890R three-display system with Vision-1 3-D synthetic vision, and both the Kansas City and St. Louis facilities will offer that package to PC-12 owners. “It’s a grand installation,” Fiataruolo said, “and there’s a lot of interest on the part of [PC-12] owners.”