AAI Corp. to work on C-17 simulators

A Goose Creek defense contractor has won a $14 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to service maintenance simulators assigned to C-17 bases around the country.

AAI Corp., a unit of Maryland-based United Industrial Corp., has already garnered about $72 million building the devices, which mimic the cockpit and mechanical systems of the massive Air Force cargo jets. The simulators allows the military to train and certify aircraft mechanics without tying up flight-ready airplanes.

The deal unveiled Thursday is to upgrade the equipment AAI has already built and installed at Air Force bases around the country. Much of the work will be done at the company’s Goose Creek facility, said AAI spokeswoman Sharon Corona.

AAI’s simulator business has taken off since the company set up shop in the Lowcountry in late 1997 with 25 workers and a single contract to design and build replicas of the C-17 cockpit for Charleston Air Force Base. It has since manufactured more than two dozen of the high-tech cargo-jet simulators in a variety of configurations.

In December, the Air Force awarded AAI a $70 million contract to build six more of the machines.

Those units are to be delivered to new C-17 maintenance train- ing centers in Alaska, California and Hawaii beginning in early 2008.

Last year, AAI invested $7 million to build up its local operations, including the $5 million acquisition of the shuttered Corning Inc. manufacturing plant in Berkeley County.

AAI said that it wasn’t surprised by a August decision by Boeing Co. to stop making C-17s in 2009.

The Air Force will continue to fly the cargo planes for years, and AAI is already tapping into separate revenue streams.

In April, for example, it won a $48.5 million defense contract to build simulators for F-22 fighter planes.

AAI employs about 290 people at its Goose Creek plant.

Reach Kyle Stock at 937-5763 or [email protected].