Since transitioning its headquarters from Cincinnati to Miami last summer, FEAM Aero is focusing on expanding its operational footprint there, uniting its international subsidiaries and rolling out practical technology initiatives to drive maintenance efficiencies.
The company also started the year with a leadership transition. Chief Operating Officer (COO) Wayne Sisson retired in January, and Chief Strategy Officer Dan Allawat returned to the COO role. Following a period of accelerated expansion for FEAM over the past few years that has included opening new facilities, expanding the company’s geographic footprint and establishing partnerships in the advanced air mobility segment, Allawat tells Aviation Week that he wants to go “back to the basics: customer focus, execution and discipline.”
In Miami, the company is bringing on new customers at its expanded headquarters, which now includes two narrowbody hangars to accommodate services such as A checks and bridging checks, drop-in maintenance, avionics support, inflight entertainment modifications and comprehensive structural repairs. ACMI and charter carrier GlobalX became a line maintenance customer in December 2025 after deciding to transition from insourced to outsourced maintenance in Miami, Allawat says. He also notes that Atlas Air continues to grow its presence in Miami, adding, “They’re integrating within one of our hangars and building out pods for cohabitating airline staff in one location.”
Between 2021-22, FEAM rapidly expanded its global line station presence, including the acquisitions of UK-based aircraft maintenance provider BOS Aerospace and Copenhagen-headquartered Northern Aerotech. Allawat says FEAM is working to integrate both companies under the FEAM EMEA brand “to give a more global front combined with the U.S., and they’re probably roughly 40 locations together.”
FEAM is also carefully rolling out several digital transformation initiatives. Chief Information Officer Joseph Hernandez tells Aviation Week he is “big on off-the-shelf and embedded AI where possible so we minimize the risk of investment.” For instance, the company recently moved to a platform that personalizes employee cybersecurity training by generating phishing test emails based on the types of messages one normally receives.
Hernandez says FEAM has also built an internal platform to digitize customer worksheets that were previously handled through manual and analog processes. Allawat notes that this is easier said than done when trying to juggle the digitalization process across dozens of customers and locations, but the company is working to standardize the process everywhere and tailor it to individual locations as necessary.
“The end goal is we’re trying to standardize the core systems and then centralize the data collection and capturing, and then we’re going to push the innovation out to the edge where all of our individual stations and end users are located,” Hernandez says.
FEAM is expanding the platform into “a broader digital operations platform,” Hernandez says. “Internally, we’re actively developing capabilities that leverage AI to automate work package ingestion and improve planning and scheduling optimization. We’re also building a customer portal designed to enhance communication, provide greater visibility into maintenance activity, and streamline customer approvals and collaboration throughout the maintenance process.”
Lindsay Bjerregaard is managing editor for Aviation Week’s MRO portfolio. Her coverage focuses on MRO technology, workforce, and product and service news for MRO Digest, Inside MRO and Aviation Week Marketplace.
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