PERRYVILLE BUSINESS: SABRELINER TO UNVEIL NEW NAVY PLANE

PERRYVILLE -- Sabreliner Corp. will roll out a reconditioned T-2 aircraft at Perryville Municipal Airport in special ceremonies for Navy officials Friday.

Sabreliner executives from the company's headquarters at St. Louis, naval officers from the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Fla., Perryville and Missouri officials, and a representative of U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson will be on hand for the first T-2 to undergo maintenance.

Sabreliner, which has contracts with the Army, Air Force and Navy, received the latter military contract in August. It calls for Sabreliner to provide periodic structural inspection, heavy maintenance, modification, repair and painting of Navy T-2C and TA-4J training aircraft.

Sabreliner, headquartered at Chesterfield, has 14 facilities in seven states, including Perryville and Nevada, Mo. It does aircraft maintenance and modification and reconditioning.

Navy Cmdr. James Rainwater and Lt. Cmdr. Brant IIahn from Pensacola and Sabreliner director of program development Al Farless, who oversees the T-2 project, will be on hand to watch the T-2 roll out of the Perryville plant Friday.

The aircraft underwent complete reconditioning that included corrosion removal and painting. Sabreliner had to manufacture some aircraft component parts to complete the reconditioning.

Work is continuing on 10 more T-2s at the Perryville facility, which is expected to complete work on at least a dozen of the planes within a year.

The T-2 Buckeye trainer was originally produced by North American Aviation (Rockwell International) in Columbus, Ohio, beginning in 1958. The T-2 is currently being used by the Navy for aircraft carrier take-off and landing training.

The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was produced in many variations from 1953 to 1979. It included more than 2,400 A-4 attack aircraft and more than 500 TA-4J trainers. Only the training version remains in service.

The current contract with the Navy has a potential value of more than $30 million. The government estimates that a dozen T-2 and two TA-4J training aircraft per year will come to Sabreliner for depot-level maintenance.

The contract also calls the same maintenance of foreign-owned T-2 and A-4 aircraft through the government's foreign military sales program. The work is being performed at Sabreliner in Perryville.

"The contract has added more than 50 jobs at the Perryville plant, said Barry Dunigan of Tretter-Gorman Inc., a St. Louis public relations company that handles Sabreliner.

Navy planes started coming into Perryville for maintenance in December.

The Navy contract was the third military contract for Sabreliner last August. Other contracts were a $200 million Air Force contract and a $3.4 million Army contract.