Nordam moving a portion of its Texas operations to Tulsa

Big aerospace news for the City of Tulsa. Longtime local aerospace company Nordam is transferring half its Texas division here. It's a story you'll only see here on the News on 6. <br><br>News

Thursday, July 10th 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Big aerospace news for the City of Tulsa. Longtime local aerospace company Nordam is transferring half its Texas division here. It's a story you'll only see here on the News on 6.

News on 6 business reporter Steve Berg has more on the move. The sprawling Nordam Repair Division in Tulsa is about to get a little bigger with the addition of the company's Regional Jet repair from Texas. Nordam Vice-President Hastings Siegfried says they've added lots of new technology to the Tulsa plant and rather than duplicate it in Texas, it makes more sense to move the Regional Jet repair here. "We've got larger staffs of engineers, larger quality assurance staff, a lot of additional capabilities with tooling, and be able to give that to that product line immediately."

Siegfried says the job growth will be modest at first, about 40 to 50 jobs. But they will be high-paying jobs. And he says what's exciting is that it's the market of the future. Airlines are turning more and more to regional jets. So that means a lot more business for regional jet repair. "Because there still are a lot of young regionals that's out there in the market and as they get more flight hours on them, we'll start to see more removals, and we could have double that in the next few years. A lot of airlines have announced new orders, that have never flown regional jets, the Jet-Blues, they've announced orders for regional jets, and so we're seeing the business model change slowly but surely."

Like all of aerospace in Tulsa, Nordam has seen its share of layoffs, so they're happy to reverse the trend, and happy their repair division can provide some economic repair for the city.

Nordam officials say the move will happen over the next few weeks.