MANSFIELD ─ In Jeffrey Turner’s eyes, Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport is a “gem” that is too easily overlooked.
“The National Guard’s here, so the runways are huge. The growth potential is very much there. That’s what really appealed to me here,” he said. “If I want to get into bigger jets or smaller turboprop airplanes, then the airport can handle it.”
Turner moved his business, Modern Avionics and Maintenance, Inc., from Medina to Mansfield in February 2018. The following year, the company moved into a larger, 19,000-square-foot hangar at the Lahm airport to accommodate the growing business.
“We grew 33 percent so far every year since I’ve taken over (the ownership),” Turner said of the company’s gross revenue.
In fact, its best year was 2020, the year that the COVID-19 pandemic struck the economy. Turner said people flew more on their airplanes amid the pandemic because there was not much to do.
Modern Avionics and Maintenance provides avionics installation service at Mansfield and does airplane inspection and maintenance at Medina Municipal Airport. It has mostly focused on small, single-engine planes.
Turner, an aircraft technician, said avionics installation is cumbersome. He has to take out all the old avionics, radios and wiring on a plane and put in the new and modern systems.
But it is more than unplug a unit and put another in. He needs to make sure the subsystems connect with the main system, finishing the paperwork. Also, the process has to follow Federal Aviation Administration’s regulations.
He customizes every installation to meet a customer’s need. He said he recently retrofitted a Beechcraft Bonanza F33A made in 1970. The single-engine plane’s engine instruments are fully digital now and are equipped with a GPS.
“It’s like going from the flip phone to your iPhone 10,” Turner said of the upgrade.
The bigger a plane is, the more time the installation takes. Turner said a big project could take up to six months to finish. That said, he has been working on cutting down the time he needs and improving customer satisfaction.
Turner did not resolve to join the aerospace industry. When he was in high school, he had no idea what he would do for a living after graduation. Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics happened to do a presentation at his school and drew his attention. The Pennsylvania-based institute has trained aircraft mechanics and avionics technicians for more than 90 years.
After finishing the two-year program, Turner moved to Cleveland and started working for the regional airlines. He said for four years he replaced skin sections on damaged airplanes most of the time. But a job that follows routine and has limited interaction with people was not for him.
In 2016, Turner bought Modern Avionics and Maintenance at the age of 27. At that time, the company was based in Medina and focused on maintenance service.
Turner expanded its service to avionics installation. The hangar at Medina that only fits two planes cannot keep up with the business growth and eventually made Turner relocate to Mansfield.
The move came with a price. Turner said he lost a quarter of maintenance-related customers when relocating to Mansfield. Most of them were based in the Cleveland area and did not want to fly to mid-central Ohio just for an annual inspection. That is why he opened another location in Medina last September.
Modern Avionics and Maintenance won Garmin’s Bronze Award for Achievement for its 2019 performance. Turner said that means the company made the top third in Garmin’s aviation products sales in the world.
He remembered jumping up and down, high fiving everyone at the office when he learned the news. He said the company probably will win another one for 2020 because the sales went up by 35 percent.