Ontic Opens Tewkesbury MRO Facility; SR Technics Adopts Bridgestone Easytrack; First Class Air Acquires Vertical Aerospace

Ontic has officially opened a new 72,000 sq ft MRO facility in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, UK, consolidating approximately 200 MRO specialists including engineers, technicians, and supply chain and logistics experts. The purpose-built site is equipped with dedicated IT systems, pneumatic and hydraulic infrastructure, an avionics workshop with an ISO 7 clean room, non-destructive testing capability, a machine shop, and a dark room. The Tewkesbury facility forms part of Ontic's $30 million global investment in MRO capacity, which also includes a new site in Miramar, Florida.

Separately, SR Technics Spain SAU has implemented Bridgestone Corporation's easytrack solution, becoming the first MRO organisation worldwide to adopt the technology. The implementation concludes a two-year collaborative project and builds on a partnership between SR Technics Spain SAU and Bridgestone Corporation dating back to 1999. The solution was initially deployed at SR Technics Spain SAU's Mallorca base and subsequently expanded to Madrid, and is now fully integrated across stores and wheel shop operations at both locations, supporting logistics, planning, and inventory management.

In a third development, First Class Air has invested in and partnered with Vertical Aerospace, a Bristow, Oklahoma-based MRO provider specialising in complex aircraft structural repair, engineering, and fabricated part manufacturing. Vertical Aerospace operates from a 226,000 sq ft facility in Bristow under the leadership of Founder and General Manager Tray Siegfried. The company holds AS9100 Rev. D certification and FAA and EASA repair station certifications, and specialises in nacelles and thrust reversers, flight control surfaces, composite and metallic structural repair, cowlings, ducts, exhaust components, and non-destructive testing.

These three moves sit within a broader pattern of MRO providers positioning for growth through physical capacity, digital systems, and capital partnerships rather than any single lever. Ontic's approach is bricks-and-mortar expansion across two continents; SR Technics' is a technology-adoption play built on a decades-long supplier relationship; First Class Air's is an investment that brings specialised structural repair capability under a broader ownership umbrella.

In this segment, facility scale, certification coverage (such as AS9100 Rev. D and FAA/EASA repair station approvals), and the ability to track parts and inventory across multiple bases are the practical levers that determine how much work a provider can take on and how reliably it can promise turnaround times. Tooling investments like clean rooms and non-destructive testing capability, and software like easytrack, are the operational backbone that lets a shop scale headcount without losing control of parts flow.

What happens next for each of these three will depend on separate disclosures: how quickly Ontic's Miramar, Florida site comes online as part of its $30 million investment, whether easytrack's results at SR Technics Spain's Mallorca and Madrid bases prompt other MRO organisations to follow, and what operational or ownership changes follow First Class Air's partnership with Vertical Aerospace.