Client Case: Embraer Phenom 300 - AeroVisto Group

About the job

use case

charter operations

sales lead

AeroVisto

interior design

AeroVisto

cooperation

Altenrhein Aviation / Egli Paint (Aviation Plaza Altenrhein)

A Concept Meets Its Test

Aviation Plaza Altenrhein rests on a simple promise: three independent specialists — Altenrhein Aviation for maintenance, AeroVisto for the cabin, Egli Paint for the exterior — working at one airport, on one schedule, through a single downtime. Not a merger; a practiced partnership at St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport.

The customer who put that promise to its test knew the location well. His Phenom 300 had come to Altenrhein Aviation for its scheduled maintenance year after year — a relationship the owner describes simply: “We are like family.” On those visits, AeroVisto had regularly worked on the cabin — armrests, wood parts, seats — and his team had toured the shops while other refurbishments took shape there.

Then came the 120-month inspection, the most comprehensive event in the aircraft’s maintenance calendar. The owner approached Natascha Rode, Managing Director of AAL AG & Egli Paint GmbH, with a decision that turned a maintenance event into something larger: use the downtime for a complete refurbishment — maintenance, cabin, and exterior, all at once.

It is hard to compose a denser project on a light jet. Every trade the Aviation Plaza brings together, on one aircraft, on one timeline — this is precisely the complexity the concept was built for.

The Maintenance Part

At Altenrhein Aviation, the 120-month inspection reached deep into the airframe, up to and including the landing gear overhaul — in the owner’s words: “They have to take out everything. It’s something really major.” Preparation matched the scale. The inspection had been planned with the customer roughly a year in advance, and throughout the maintenance, a weekly meeting brought Altenrhein Aviation, the customer’s team, and Embraer to the same table — issues discussed early, decisions taken early.

“It’s not a very easy job — it’s a very, very tough project,” the owner says of the maintenance scope. His conclusion: “I’m highly satisfied with what they’ve done.”

The Interior Part

For AeroVisto, the project began where every refurbishment should: with a documented incoming inspection. It changed the plan. The wood veneer, more than a decade in service, was past the point where revarnishing alone was an option — so the cabin’s woodwork was re-veneered and then built up to a deep dark-brown high-gloss finish that now mirrors the cabin around it. The plated parts told a similar story and were re-plated throughout.

The new cabin reads bright, calm, and precise. Six 16G seats are upholstered in bright beige leather, carrying a diamond design stitch that gives the cabin its signature detail; the divan follows in matching leather. Overhead and along the windows, headliner, window liners, and valances run in a soft, light ultraleather that lets the daylight do the work. Underfoot, a tobacco-tone machine-tufted carpet grounds the palette; the dark high-gloss monuments frame it. Even the transitions are considered — new seatbelts in matching beige, including the airbag belts, the baggage compartments re-lined, the airstairs finished with new non-textile flooring, and the cockpit deliberately kept in its existing character with new mid-gray leather and silver-gray sheepskin.

Design decisions were made where the aircraft was — during the customer’s visits to Altenrhein, hosted the way the Aviation Plaza hosts: materials on the table, the shops a short walk away, and Natascha Rode making sure every visit ran as smoothly as the project itself. That the final design was still being refined while production was already under way never became a problem — at one location, approvals, samples, and work moved in step. Behind it all ran the certification track: burn tests, approved engineering data, Engineering Order and Form 1 — the paperwork a cabin needs before it is allowed to be beautiful.

The Paint Part

At Egli Paint’s modern paint shop on the Aviation Plaza site, the aircraft received a complete exterior finish — masked, sanded, and refinished to an even, deep gloss. And while the exterior took shape, maintenance and cabin work continued in parallel, a few steps away on the same site.

What One Location Changes

A project with this many trades has a natural enemy: distance. The owner, who has managed aircraft projects for years, puts it precisely: “You have to finish with A before you move to B. If something has to be shipped from afar, it might delay other work. When most of the support companies for a project like this are just around the corner, it helps a lot.”

At Altenrhein, around the corner is meant literally. During one visit, the owner stopped by AeroVisto and Egli Paint — next door, in his words. Findings were discussed at the aircraft, not over email chains. And through it all ran a level of personal care that the owner sums up in one line about Natascha Rode: “If you call Natascha at night, she’s there for you.”

AeroVisto serves customers around the world, and distance has never stood in the way: dedicated logistics solutions — dismantling, packing, and transport handled by AeroVisto’s own teams — keep even complex projects simple, wherever the aircraft is based. And yet, the Aviation Plaza adds something special of its own: every specialist, every decision, and the customer himself — in one place.

The Confirmation

The project closed in person: a customer quality check on site, then final reassembly and redelivery — maintenance completed, exterior refinished, cabin renewed from cockpit to baggage compartment. An aircraft the owner now calls, in his own words, “sleek and beautiful.”

His verdict on the whole: “After 120 months, it’s more or less like we are getting a brand-new aircraft.”

And standing in the cabin, he reached further back. He had collected this aircraft once before — in Brazil, in 2015, at delivery: “Look at this beautiful material. It was just the same when I went to Brazil to receive this aircraft — just like this. Brand new.”

An owner who compares an aircraft in its eleventh year to the day he first received it — that is the result three specialists set out to deliver, and the confirmation that the Aviation Plaza concept does what it promises.

Our sincere thanks to Ali Tunde Bolarinwa, CEO of Skyward Aviation, for his time and his openness.

Scope of work

Maintenance — Altenrhein Aviation

Exterior — Egli Paint

Cabin Interior — AeroVisto

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