Tamarack Announces New South Carolina Transformation Center at VBACE

At the NBAA’s first-ever Virtual Business Aviation Conference and Exposition (VBACE), Tamarack Aerospace Group announced the addition of the Tamarack East Coast Transformation Center at Aiken Regional Airport (KAIK), in South Carolina. The center will be associated with aviation veteran Mike Laver’s Carolina Turbine Support, which has brokered, serviced, and ferried aircraft worldwide for decades. Laver also has a long history as a vendor for the U.S. Air Force.

Tamarack’s new East Coast Transformation Center in South Carolina will provide factory installation of Active Winglets to the eastern United States and South America. The company has previously offered this service at its West Coast Transformation Center in Sandpoint, Idaho, a European Transformation Centre in Oxford, England, and more than twenty Authorized Service Centers across the US, South America, and Europe. The company stated that the new South Carolina Transformation Center will offer Active Winglet installations to clients in 10 days or less.

Tamarack’s growth plans involve a long-term expansion involving many different kinds of airframes, including business jets, commercial single-aisle aircraft, and military applications. “The new center houses the Tamarack East Coast Regional Sales Manager and a small team of qualified transformation specialists. We are planning to be able to install three Active Winglet kits per month at all locations,” said Tamarack COO Danny Hiner. Tamarack’s president, Jacob Klinginsmith, added that quick installation turnaround is a key factor in upgrading current Citation aircraft because installation of active winglets is much less intrusive than traditional winglets. “Our installations take less than two weeks, with as little as one week of downtime,” Klinginsmith said.

Klinginsmith added that Tamarack is at its core a technology company, and that the fuel savings and performance benefits available to the Citation lineup today are being developed for other airframes now. “We’ll be making some announcements next year about the next models,” he said.

After a brief and temporary FAA grounding of aircraft with active winglets based on a questionable incident in the UK, Tamarack acted proactively and applied for a protective bankruptcy and is preparing for continued growth. “The bankruptcy was self-imposed and allowed us to reorganize and get ready for our current growth. Current customers loved the modification and started flying with our modification immediately after the AD was lifted. New customers continued to order the modification during the unusually short grounding period and now we’ve installed the modification on more than 100 Cessna jets. Our business is very healthy, and as has been reported, we are experiencing significant growth and planning installations for many other airframes. We are finished with the bankruptcy except for crossing some Ts and dotting some Is, all debts have been paid back and the bankruptcy is really in our rearview mirror.” the company said.

During a virtual press conference presentation at NBAA VBACE, Tamarack CEO Nick Guida explained exactly what an “active” winglet is, versus one that is passive. “When you put a winglet on a wing, you end up bending the wing more and sacrificing that efficiency by putting on additional structure to withstand the load of the wing. This is where our Atlas load-alleviating technology comes in. During very short duration events such as turbulence, gusts, and maneuvers, this device will either pop up or pop down to aerodynamically disconnect the winglet for a brief fraction of a second or longer, as long as that event is causing stress on the wing. This essentially “turns off” our winglet to dump additional load. Our load alleviation technology enables a substantial increase in aspect ratio without the need and additional weight of wing reinforcement,” Guida said.

Guida made note of the fuel savings and performance increases owners regularly see with the company’s active winglets installed. “One of our customers routinely flies from Bozeman, Montana to Carlsbad, California, but on his first Tamarack CJ winglet trip, he landed with 1,400 lbs instead of his usual 700 lbs—that’s about $500 fuel savings per leg. We have CJ customers flying home to Long Beach from the East Coast with only one stop; others are departing from Telluride at 1,000 lbs higher TOW than before,” Guida said.

Guida added that when compared to traditional passive winglets—which the company says have been shown to reduce fuel usage up to five percent—Tamarack’s active winglets reduce fuel usage by up to 33 percent. “Our active winglet technology supports sustainable aviation practices by providing a significant and measurable reduction in CO2 emissions as well as reduced fossil fuel use,” he said.