Ceramic Coating at Geneva (LSGG)

What changes at Geneva?

Geneva sits at 1,411 feet elevation, four kilometres from the city centre, with a single runway (04/22, 3,900 metres). The airport permits take-offs from 06:00 to midnight local, but departures after 22:00 are restricted—since January 2025 they incur penalties—and the slot curfew for allocation runs 21:26 to 05:59 CET. Business aviation FBOs staff their desks 06:00 to 22:00; work outside those hours requires a call-out arranged in advance. All general aviation movements need PPR, requested through your handling agent; slots cannot be filed directly.

Three handling agents operate from the south apron: Signature Aviation at Terminal C3, Jet Aviation in its own two-storey terminal, and Dassault Aviation Business Services, also at C3. Customs, immigration, and 24-hour security surveillance sit on site at the business aviation terminal, so our airside pass and escort come through the FBO. Because late-evening turnarounds compress before the 22:00 wall, ceramic-coating projects are scheduled well in advance and occupy a dedicated hangar slot during the three-to-six-day cure window, keeping the apron clear for transient traffic.

Why apply ceramic coating instead of simply waxing the aircraft?

Wax sits on top of paint; ceramic coating bonds to it. A polymer wax may last three months before another application is due, and each wash still requires the same effort. Ceramic forms a covalent silica layer that lasts two to three years, repels water at a steeper contact angle, and makes contaminants—de-icing fluid, exhaust soot, bug strikes, brake dust—slide off rather than etch in. The hydrophobic effect means every rinseless or dry wash afterward takes half the time, and you avoid the compounding cycle that thins clear-coat with each correction.

The coating also resists UV degradation, which matters when the aircraft splits its time between high-altitude airfields and southern European ramps in summer. We cure the ceramic in a controlled hangar environment so temperature and humidity stay within the resin manufacturer's window; curing on an open stand would risk dust contamination and uneven cross-linking. The result is a glass-like finish that holds gloss without repeated polishing, and a warranty document that travels with the tech log.

What does the three-to-six-day process include?

Day one is decontamination: clay bar, iron remover, and a solvent wipe to pull embedded rail dust, tree sap, and old wax residue out of the paint. We then inspect under LED work lamps for swirl marks, oxidation, and micro-scratches; any defect deeper than five microns is wet-sanded with 3000-grit, then machine-polished through a three-stage compound sequence until the paint reads flat under a depth gauge. Brightwork—nacelle rings, cheat-line trim, door handles—is polished separately to remove tarnish and light corrosion.

Day two: first ceramic layer goes onto the fuselage, wings, winglets, and tail in overlapping fifty-centimetre panels, then flash-cures under infrared for twenty minutes per zone. Day three: second layer for cross-link density, followed by a separate ceramic formulation on all glass and a brightwork sealant on polished metal. Days four through six are full cure; cabin air is held at twenty degrees and forty-per-cent humidity, and the aircraft is not moved. Before handover we deliver a digital photo report—thirty to fifty images under polarised light—and a maintenance card showing the coating date, product batch, and the recommended wash interval.

How does the handler see a third-party detailing crew in the hangar?

Handling agents at Geneva expect us to carry our own public-liability certificate, to check in at the FBO desk every morning, and to leave the hangar and the aircraft cleaner than we found them. We bring our own GPU if shore power is already allocated, we do not open access panels without the tech log counter-signed, and we never move the aircraft on jacks or tugs without the handler's ground crew present. Static ports, pitot tubes, and angle-of-attack vanes are masked before any spray work; avionics bays and the APU intake remain no-touch zones.

Because Geneva's business aviation apron is slot-coordinated and space-constrained, the handler will not release a hangar for three days unless the booking is locked and the aircraft has a firm departure slot at the end. We confirm our arrival window, provide a crew list and passport copies for airside passes, and submit a waste-disposal manifest if we are bringing in compound slurry or used microfibre bundles. The handler's operations team appreciates a daily progress photograph sent to their WhatsApp group; it reduces check-in calls and keeps the flight department informed without anyone walking into a active polishing bay.

What does Alpine winter weather do to unprotected paint?

Geneva's position at the south-west tip of Lac Léman means the aircraft sees freeze-thaw cycles from November through March, and Type I or Type IV fluid every other departure during cold snaps. De-icing fluid is hygroscopic; if it is not rinsed within seventy-two hours, it pulls moisture into the paint film and leaves a hazy residue that requires a clay bar to remove. Uncoated paint also collects road salt aerosol from the A1 motorway and calcium chloride dust from the apron, both of which etch the clear coat if the aircraft sits for a week between flights.

Ceramic coating locks the surface so fluid beads and rolls off the wing leading edges and belly during taxi. When the aircraft does come in for a post-winter wash, the contaminants have not bonded; a rinseless wash with a pump sprayer and two buckets is usually enough, rather than a full decon and polish cycle. We have also seen a twenty-per-cent reduction in the frequency of belly cleaning on aircraft that winter in the Alps, because brake dust and hydraulic mist do not adhere to the ceramic layer the way they do to bare paint or wax.

How is the work documented for the flight department?

Every ceramic project closes with a bound photo report: before-and-after pairs under natural light and cross-polarised LED, paint-thickness readings at twelve airframe stations, and close-ups of the corrected leading edges, nacelles, and belly. The report includes the product data sheet, batch number, application temperature, and humidity log from each cure day, so if the aircraft changes hands or moves to a different maintenance provider, the new team knows exactly what is on the paint and when re-coating is due.

We also hand over a maintenance card—laminated, passport-sized—that lists the coating date, the recommended wash interval (typically every four to six weeks with a rinseless product), and a list of banned chemicals: no alkaline degreasers, no abrasive pads, no automatic drive-through brushes. The card goes into the tech-log pouch. If the operator enrolls in a quarterly wash programme, we update the card with each service date and track gloss readings with a calibrated meter, so the flight department has a quantified record of paint condition over the ceramic's two-to-three-year lifespan.