Army helicopters receive modernized ‘all assembly’ hangar at depot

Army helicopter assembly is reaching a new level of efficiency now that Corpus Christi Army Depot’s renovated Hangar 43 is back in operations. Work resumed in the hangar mid-March after two years of updates, which prompted a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by military leaders, civic leaders and depot team members, April 13.

“We truly have the most modernized and state-of-the-art facility right here,” said Victor Lopez, CCAD’s director of infrastructure and risk management who supervised the renovation. “Very few places exist like this anywhere.”

The 110,000-square-foot hangar’s updates will increase aircraft production capability and improve the air and electrical distribution throughout the building which will now specialize in aircraft assembly and electrical installation.

“We’ve taken a 1941-era hangar that was built for sea planes and we have modernized it to perform what we do now, to be the facility in which we do the final assembly and electronics for helicopters,” Lopez said. “What you see is actually a state-of-the-art specialized, special-purpose facility built for exactly what we do in the remanufacture of aircraft.”

The approximate 250 people on Hangar 43’s shop floor are skilled and ready for the various aircraft that will come through the assembly line.

“The work that was in Hangar 8 is now here [in Hangar 43], permanently,” said CCAD Commander Col. Allan Lanceta. “Now we have a definite state-of-the-art facility that we can put aircraft in and these guys have all the tools available to them right on the spot. … And there’s a lot more capability in this hangar because they have all the modern facilities that they need versus (what was) in Hangar 8.”