Sonico keeps planes flying

MOSES LAKE — As he leads a group through a room full of airplane parts, William Purdue says something that is both stunning and counterintuitive.

“You know, it’s safer to fly in an airplane than to walk in your shoes,” he said.

And Sonico, the company Purdue founded, has been in Moses Lake since 1980 and has been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration to repair airplane parts since 1985, is a big part of the reason flying is now as safe as it is.

It’s a complex business, and a heavily regulated one. But one Sonico is central to. In fact, according to Purdue, Sonico has repaired parts on most of the commercial Boeing planes, and more than a few Airbus jets, flying for airlines in Europe and North America.

Formerly located in an old hanger at the Port of Moses Lake, Sonico recently completed construction and has just about finished moving into a new headquarters and repair center at the corner of Randolph Road Northeast and Patton Boulevard Northeast, right across from Endeavor Middle School and Big Bend Community College.

And the company, which employs around 40 people — including engineers, welders, machinists, and mechanics — opened their doors to visitors on Friday. To show, and tell, the community what they do.

Airlines are Sonico’s primary customers, and they send worn or broken airplane parts — everything from pilot seats to the complex devices that deploy and retract wing flaps — in to get them fixed or rebuilt.

The company also does a brisk business in spare parts for Boeing jets. For example, it’s currently advertising an aft cargo door for a 737 for $56,000.

“The interesting thing about this business, the first thing is quality,” Purdue said. “So we pay attention to quality. We have very little rejection here.”

If something is rejected, Purdue said, it’s usually because of a paperwork error. Sometimes a part might not be assembled right, but that’s almost always discovered by people who check — and recheck — those parts, both and Sonico and with its clients.

According to Keith Starcher, the maintenance manager at Sonico, airlines don’t like swap out parts on airplanes — replace a worn or broken part with a new one — because it becomes too difficult to keep track of all the paperwork and all of the parts.

“They like their product fixed, to have a complete history,” Starcher said.

Which means, Purdue said, airlines are willing to pay for quick turnarounds even on complicated airplane parts.

“And now if they send us a part, they want it right back,” he said. “So we have to concentrate on turnaround time.”

A typical airplane part is also designed to “fail safe,” Perdue said. That is, fail in such a way that it won’t cause the plane to crash.

“And most parts on an airplane have double redundancy. For example, if you have a hydraulic failure, there’s a mechanical backup, or a pneumatic backup, or something of that sort,” he said.

“That’s why it’s so safe to fly on airplanes,” Purdue added. “We adhere to that. If you don’t have quality, you don’t have a business.”

Starcher said the company, which had been planning its new building for 20 years, intends not only to stay in Moses Lake, but expand its operations.

“We own the lot to the south, and we’re considering building another facility for maintenance and storage, and possibly even manufacturing,” he said.

Currently, the company is working with Big Bend Community College to allow students in the school’s airframe and power plant certification program to do internships at Sonico. And the company is also trying to get some clients outside of North America and Europe, in order to have a more steady flow of work.

“In the U.S., a lot of airlines bring their planes in for checks right after Christmas, so there’s a flood of parts at the end January,” he said. “Australia’s winter is our summer. So, that would even things out.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.