Designing a facility to house a new fleet

Westjet Wide Body Hangar, Calgary International Airport

When WestJet wanted to develop a new light maintenance hangar for their incoming fleet of wide-body Boeing 787-9 airplanes, allowing the expansion of their overseas routes from the Calgary International Airport, they brought in our team to provide infrastructure and transit design. The hangar? Three times the size of a football field and able to accommodate one 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft and two narrow-body 737s at the same time.

We helped equip the hangar to meet the functional needs of the aircrafts including the inspection and/or removal of specific parts using overhead equipment such as cranes and swinging jib booms. Our designers also accounted for the weight of the aircrafts with floor slab thickenings as required.

Our team’s design of the two-story office building, which can accommodate 130 maintenance and operations staff, is an attractive and functional front face to the hangar. It’s clad in curtainwall and insulated metal panels and features direct access to the hangar through a two-hour-burn, fire-resistance-rated separation wall. An enclosed ground-level link between the west side of the new hangar and existing 737 hangar also allows for convenient passage of large maintenance vehicles. Plus, a link exists to the centralized warehouse for efficient retrieval and storage of aircraft components.

With this project in place, WestJet can comfortably expand their capacity for overseas routes through the Calgary International Airport.