Page 8 - April 2022

Jeff and Amber Lowe and their son, Parker, use their Cessna 206 for missionary bush flying that reaches out to 12 villages on the Alaska Peninsula that are completely inaccessible by road, most only having unimproved airstrips.
The training was helpful for Jeff’s first season as a bush pilot. He is returning again this year with his wife Amber and teenage son Parker, and they plan to spend about four months out of the year there flying for Alaska Village Missions, a non-denominational, evangelical ministry reaching out to 12 villages on the Alaska Peninsula, which stretches 500 miles southwest from mainland Alaska into the Aleutian Islands.
“We go for a month at a time in the months that we can fly a Cessna 206 there,” Jeff said. “It’s where the Bering Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, so the weather is atrocious a fair amount of time especially in the winter.”
The organization has a hub on the peninsula and needs the Cessna because the villages are completely inaccessible by road. Most only have an unimproved airstrip.
“I’d love to have the King Air for the deicing capabilities but most of these runways are too short and can get muddy,” he said.
Jeff is able to take time away from AvFab and turn his responsibilities over to G.R. and Jeff’s 28-year-old son Hayden, who worked summers at AvFab while in school and joined the family business full-time in 2019.
‘There’s got to be a better way’
Jeff and G.R. started in the business in 1978, first selling small parts and salvage as Central Airmotive.
6 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
They took note of interior items that were no longer supported by the OEMs or were hard to find, along with items that continuously broke.
In an interview for a 2013 article in King Air magazine, G.R. explained how he and Jeff developed their niche.
“We had a very strong clientele with Central Airmotive so we just listened to them,” he said. “One thing Jeff and I learned early on was that there were a lot of shops repairing aircraft but not many of them wanted to repair interior components, especially seats. There are a lot of subtleties involved with seats so it was an area that not many had spent the time to become proficient in. We studied a lot, learned a lot, went through a lot of trial and error. Eventually we began to put it together and learned the intricacies.”
They launched AvFab in 1988 to offer inspection, repair and overhaul of aircraft interior components such as seats, divans, tables, toilets and cabinets in a timely manner. By 1992 they were responding to customer requests to develop and produce custom aircraft seating, parts and components that enhance the value and versatility of an aircraft.
Today, the sister companies employ about 30 in Clinton, where they operate in 95,000-square-feet of space. Visiting completion centers in the King Air has been an important part of growing the business.
“The completion centers are our best research and development team,” he said. “They bring us the issues
APRIL 2022