Over the years, Tower staff have perfected routing and delivery capabilities that have never failed us by having all deliveries locally, provincially, nationally, and internationally being controlled from within the company. Our specialty is to find it, deliver it to specification, on time, and at the price quoted. The company has an enviable record of carrying out this task for the last thirty years. Our delivery processes apply equally to military and commercial support operations.

 

 

It all began on an emergency basis in 1978, in Winnipeg Manitoba, at the International Airport. In those days, emergency response regarding aircraft component specialized sourcing did not exist in Canadian Aviation. Nation wide all operators had to place orders outside the country and wait up to a year or more for specialized parts from the United States, France, Germany and Great Britain. When an aircraft was down it stayed down. Obviously the down time cost the operator a tremendous amount of money (hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases) and worst of all, lost service to their customers.

Canada is a huge nation, second in geographical area only to Russia. When an aircraft is down in a remote region it is paramount that the parts and support services get to the scene as soon as possible. The Founder and President of Tower Aerospace saw the need and as a result, today, thirty years later, Tower Aerospace is the premier Canadian leader in specialized aircraft and aerospace hardware and component sourcing.

 

Quality assurance throughout the entire company is first and foremost. Public safety is everything, military or commercial, our continuous objective is total airworthiness standards and procedures.

Along with emergency response of the required components and hardware came the need to establish a world recognized quality assurance system  recognized on a global basis. Today Tower engineering quality control staff are highly qualified professional graduate engineers, college graduates in aeronautics,  licensed, approved military and commercial aviation specialists. They are recognized and approved by FAA, Transport Canada, CAA England and JAA, in Europe. In addition, the Tower quality assurance system is approved by the Canadian Armed Forces and the United States Armed Forces. Tower Aerospace has based its present QA system on ISO 9000 and American AS 9000, including ISO 14,000, International and American aerospace standards of quality assurance and inspection processes.

 

 

In thirty years Tower Aerospace has asserted itself many times over in emergency situations, both Nationally and Internationally by responding in twenty-four and thirty six hour delivery in support to aviation crisis. A good example is a historic event that took place during the days of Freddy Laker, and his most touted Laker Airways, which was his "lunch bag", no frills airline out of England in the late 1980's. Freddy had a Boeing 737 , which was suddenly unserviceable in New Jersey with 190 international passengers and full cargo bay waiting to go. A ground person in their great wisdom, ran a forklift, with a crate on it, into and damaging the elevator on the aircraft during loading! The elevator was severely damaged and the aircraft was grounded. Passengers were stranded in hotels, cargo and goods were held up, and the aircraft was severely damaged. Tower was contacted as we had a tagged, overhauled matching elevator in our warehouse. Tower was ten hours away by air. How were we to get a crate five feet by eighteen feet by eight inches wide to New Jersey the next day?

Believe it or not, we received the purchase call on Easter Friday at noon. The purchase order was faxed immediately, now we had to get it there from one nation to another. The cargo door on the L-1011 was large enough but it only flew from Vancouver B.C. or Edmonton Alberta, not good enough! Not fast enough! It would have to go to Toronto, truck to New Jersey because Air Canada at the time did not fly in to New Jersey. What now? That afternoon at 5 PM, the Tower's President drove to the airport in Calgary and found a venerable, long range, WW 11, Douglas DC3. A fifty five year old aircraft, with a clamshell door. He measured the door! The crate fit with a clearance of an inch and a half! The crate was loaded, two pilots were hired, and the aircraft left direct to New Jersey that evening at nine PM. They chugged along for nine hours! The elevator was unloaded, installed, signed out and the passengers and load were airborne by ten AM the next day!

There are many other stories, to many to tell here and now, however this is a good example of how Tower Aerospace has demonstrated support for the industry through tenacity, ingenuity and dedication to our customers. When our services are requested, our customers become part of us. Their problem is our problem and we must do everything possible to support them.