Ceramic Coating at Girona-Costa Brava (LEGE)

Why schedule ceramic coating at Girona rather than waiting for home base?

Ceramic work makes sense at Girona if the aircraft already spends a week here between owner legs or if you are rotating through Spain and southern France on a charter programme. The three-to-six-day window fits neatly into a gap that is too short for heavy maintenance but long enough that the aircraft would otherwise sit idle on the apron.

Coating immediately after a Spanish summer season also captures the benefit when it matters: the ceramic layer goes on while the paint still holds its correction, and the protection is fresh for the next block of Mediterranean exposure. If you wait until the jet returns to a northern base in autumn, you lose six months of UV resistance and hydrophobic shedding, and the paint may need another correction by the following spring.

We have handled aircraft arriving from Palma, Ibiza and Nice, turning around in two or three days for a positioning flight, then returning a week later for the ceramic application. The split works well when the owner's schedule will not release the aircraft for a full block but can accommodate two short stops a fortnight apart.

What happens during the three to six days in the hangar?

Day one is decontamination: we clay-bar every painted surface to pull out embedded rail dust, exhaust particles and mineral scale that a wash cannot remove. The paint is then machine-corrected with a two-stage polish—cutting compound to level swirls and oxidation, finishing polish to bring the gloss back to show standard. Brightwork—nacelle lips, leading edges, winglets if metal—receives its own polishing sequence so the ceramic bonds to a clean, smooth substrate.

On day two we lay the first ceramic coat. The liquid cures panel by panel under controlled temperature; we do not rush the flash-off because a weak bond in the first layer compromises the entire system. The second coat goes on twelve to twenty-four hours later, depending on the product and the ambient conditions inside the hangar. Windows and transparencies receive a separate ceramic formulation that will not haze or interfere with optical clarity.

Days three through six are curing time. The bond reaches ninety per cent of its final hardness in seventy-two hours, but we prefer to keep the aircraft inside for the full cure before it sees rain, dust or a GPU exhaust plume. You collect the jet with a maintenance plan that specifies the PH-neutral soap for future washes, the interval for a booster coat, and the warranty period—typically two years if you follow the care schedule.

What changes at Girona-Costa Brava that affects a multi-day ceramic job?

Girona-Costa Brava sits at 469 feet elevation, twelve and a half kilometres south-west of Girona city centre, with a single runway—01/19, 2,400 metres. The airport operates H24 with no published curfew, and customs, immigration, ATS, fuelling, handling and de-icing are available during aerodrome hours. Six handling agents are licensed at the field, and FBO service is available around the clock: Universal Aviation operates twenty-four hours, ExecuJet offers twenty-four-hour service on request, and Sky Valet provides H24 customs. That coverage means you can drop the aircraft late in the evening or collect it before dawn without waiting for a handler to open.

Centervol operates its own facility—roughly two thousand square metres—inside the airport perimeter, with lounges, crew briefing rooms and a Part-145 maintenance hangar. When we book ceramic work, we coordinate directly with the handling agent you have chosen; the hangar space comes through them or through a separate arrangement if you are combining the detailing with scheduled maintenance. The fact that multiple handlers hold H24 capability gives you flexibility: if your inbound slot is pushed by weather or a delayed positioning leg, the ground team will still be ready when you arrive.

How do you manage access and the aircraft's tech log during a week-long detail?

Airside access at Girona follows the standard Spanish model: our team holds airside passes, but any movement onto the apron or into the hangar is coordinated with your nominated handler. If you want a progress inspection mid-week, the handler arranges the escort and logs the visit. We do not move the aircraft or open a panel without the flight crew's knowledge, and if a tech-log entry is required—for example, if we need to pull a cowling to polish a nacelle ring or if the correction sequence reveals paint thickness below limits in one bay—we photograph the condition, write the finding, and wait for your release before we continue.

Most ceramic jobs at Girona run without a tech-log entry because the work stays entirely external and non-invasive. The only systems we interact with are the exterior lights—we mask them during coating and test them before you collect the aircraft—and the pitot-static group, which we cover and then verify clear. If you are combining the ceramic application with a maintenance input in the same hangar, we schedule our access around the engineers' workflow so that paint correction happens before panels are opened and the final ceramic coat goes on after everything is closed and the aircraft is clean.

What documentation do we receive, and can you deliver it before the next leg?

You receive a photo report, a maintenance plan and a warranty document. The photo report runs to sixty or eighty images: before-and-after pairs for each major section, close-ups of the corrected paint under direct light, and shots of the ceramic application in progress so you can see the coverage on the wing leading edges, the belly and the gear-bay lips. We also photograph the gloss-meter readings taken before correction and after the second ceramic coat; the jump in specular reflection is typically fifteen to twenty points, and the numbers prove the bond is complete.

The maintenance plan is a one-page card that travels with the aircraft. It lists the ceramic product by name and batch, the application date, the recommended wash interval (usually every four to six weeks with PH-neutral soap), and the date for the next booster coat—twelve to eighteen months out. The warranty document states the coverage period, the conditions that void protection (abrasive wash media, solvent spills, unapproved polish), and our contact details for any question that arises at another base.

All three documents are ready the day you collect the aircraft. If you need them earlier—for example, if your director of maintenance wants to review the report before signing the release—we can send the photo package and the maintenance plan by secure link as soon as the final cure is confirmed, usually forty-eight hours before your departure slot.

Does ceramic coating make sense for an aircraft that sees frequent de-icing?

Yes, and the return is clearer than for an aircraft that never leaves the Mediterranean. Ceramic coatings are formulated to resist Type I and Type IV fluids; the hydrophobic surface prevents the glycol from bonding to the paint, so post-flight washes remove residue in one pass instead of three. If your aircraft operates a winter programme into the Alps or northern Europe, the ceramic layer also shields the paint from the corrosive salts in runway de-icing chemicals, which otherwise etch the clear coat and dull the cheat line by spring.

The second advantage is cold-soak performance. When the aircraft descends from FL410 into a wet winter morning, condensation forms on the belly and the nacelles. Untreated paint holds that moisture for twenty or thirty minutes; a ceramic-coated surface sheds it in five. The faster dry-down reduces the risk of water spots and means the ground crew can begin a pre-flight inspection or a quick wash sooner, tightening your turnaround if you are running a tight schedule between legs.

We recommend applying ceramic in late summer or early autumn, before the de-icing season begins, so the coating has a month of gentle service to reach full hardness. An aircraft that arrives in November with six months of Type IV already baked into the paint will need a more aggressive correction before the ceramic goes on, and that adds a day to the schedule.