VICTORVILLE: Plane-painting company gets big lift

Last fall's $3.2 billion merger of United and Continental airlines is helping to create hundreds of new jobs in Victorville, where aircraft painters are working almost around the clock to turn the two companies' planes into a uniform fleet.

The combined United Continental Holdings Inc., now the world's largest airline, has tapped Santa Ana-based Leading Edge Aviation Services to repaint 650 airplanes -- more than half of the airlines' combined fleet -- in a design scheme that combines the United name with Continental's colors and logo.

It's the largest job Leading Edge has ever landed.

Work on the contract began in December and will take more than two years to complete. Much of it is being done at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, where the project has precipitated a flurry of hiring. Company leaders say those jobs will be retained even after the United work is completed.

Pete Robertson, general manager of Leading Edge's Victorville facility, said he had 90 employees nine months ago; today, he has about 350.

Kathryn Brewer, chief financial officer for Leading Edge, said the facility could ramp up to as many as 500 employees in the coming months.

"We've got more work than we know what to do with for the foreseeable future," she said.

For the Inland region, where the unemployment rate still sits at 13.4 percent, it's welcome news. Robertson said he has seen a huge response to job openings, receiving 1,200 applications in a 10-day span from as far away as Orange and Riverside counties.

Leading Edge was founded in 1989 by CEO Mike Manclark, who got his start washing private planes at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Today, it is the largest airplane painting company in the world, according to Brewer.

The Victorville facility opened seven years ago and expanded recently to five hangars with 235,000 square feet of combined space, making it a go-to facility for much of Leading Edge's wide-body work.

In addition to Victorville, Leading Edge operates from large facilities in Amarillo, Texas, and Greenville, Miss., along with smaller sites across the U.S. The company has doubled its workforce in the last year to about 1,300, and revenues are expected to grow from about $45 million last year to more than $50 million this year.

The Altruism: Airline profits to tumble in 2011 on fuel, global ...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Global airlines cut their 2011 profit forecast by more than half to $4 billion on Monday as high oil prices and turmoil in Japan, North Africa and the Middle East weigh on the industry's recovery.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents most global carriers, also warned of a looming trade war if Europe moves ahead with plans to force airlines to join an emissions trading scheme next year. China said it would support legal action.

Airlines say the scheme, designed to tackle growing emissions from the aviation industry, will only increase costs and add to pressures already caused by the sluggish global economy.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Global airlines cut their 2011 profit forecast by more than half to $4 billion on Monday as high oil prices and turmoil in Japan, North Africa and the Middle East weigh on the industry's recovery.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents most global carriers, also warned of a looming trade war if Europe moves ahead with plans to force airlines to join an emissions trading scheme next year. China said it would support legal action.

Airlines say the scheme, designed to tackle growing emissions from the aviation industry, will only increase costs and add to pressures already caused by the sluggish global economy.

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