Winona airplane repair business staying open during pandemic

Heath Aviation still doing business despite slowdown

On this thursday.

An airplane repair business is managing to stay aflight during this pandemic despite the well-documented problems facing the airline industry as a whole.

Wtva's wayne hereford talked to the owner about how he's managing to keep his business above ground.

"here at the winona - montogomery airport i'm at the heath aviation facility where they fix airplanes for all kinds of buisness people.

Its been a little rough during this pandemic but i talked to the owner who says that right now things are looking up."

"we've been fortunate we didn't have to lay anybody off.

We had some people take off intitially because they were concerned about health risks and everything."

Josh heath and his father own the business.

They restore older airplanes like this 1948 model and sell them to the public .

He says business ,while not strong, is at least holding its own.

Iand he says he and his workers are able to stay safe from infection because very few people come inside the business right now.

"we don't have a lot of foot traffic in and out of here.

We have a lot of air traffic.

We monitor who comes and goes and we keep ourselves distanced from each other and the biggest thing that's hurt us is just getting equipment in because all of our supply chains have slowed down."

He says he has worked on jets from all over the country even for some local and international celebrities .

"as a matter of fact, because people aren't able to travel with the big airlines as much, its actually made a little resurgence in general aviation because people who are in business still need to travel.

Standup.."heath says that as business continues to get better during the pandemic, people will continue to fly he believes his business will take off the ground even more.

In winona wayne hereford wtva nine news."