BAS Kansas City Takes Flight: A Behind-the-Scenes Look with Kate Broug
Posted by Clinton McJenkin on Oct 8th 2024
It's been about a year and a half since BAS acquired the former White Industries and rebranded it as BAS Kansas City. It has been a wild ride, to say the least. One of the key goals for our leadership and marketing teams was to bring much-needed attention to the Bates City, Missouri operation from the aviation industry at large. While the place was staffed with a handful of wonderful, knowledgeable people, and the inventory was outstanding, the business operation mostly relied on the hope that someone would call. In a digital world, White Industries had been left behind.
This brings us to Kate Broug...
Late Summer, 2023...
Kate reached out to us as she was beginning to shoot her First Flights series, and we jumped at the opportunity to be featured on her show. I spent several days filming with Kate and Fernando in both BAS locations to show the contrast between where the aircraft salvage industry had been and where it's headed. The former White Industries airfield, Harry S Truman Airport in Bates City, MO, is a true time capsule of how the 60-ish-year-old aircraft salvage industry had operated for many decades.
Airplanes parked in the field, waiting for that magical phone call to remove that much-needed part and get it to somewhere around the world, helping someone get back in the air. The rest of the aircraft slowly grows into the dirt or into the forest around it. This was the status quo, and it still is in many places. BAS is changing that narrative, one salvaged aircraft at a time.
Working with Kate was an incredible experience. As a pilot and true aviation enthusiast, Kate is adept at asking genuine, engaging questions and looking closely at the answers. I believe her tour of the airfield outside of Kansas City was eye-opening. And her ability to tell the story and frame the history of our industry is unique.
Enjoy the BAS episode of Kate's First Flights series, and be sure to subscribe to her channel for future content and updates.
Also, check out our article on the acquisition of White Industries and what we are doing to re-engage that valuable and needed source of aviation parts and components with the industry.
Kate's links:
BAS Kansas City is Growing!
When we acquired White Industries, we knew there was a goldmine of aviation parts that spanned many decades of aircraft and salvage buying. Once we got our hands on it, that inventory looked more like a episode of Hoarders than an airplane parts warehouse.
The team we acquired was working hard long before we arrived to keep it organized and do the best they could to manage the chaos it had evolved into. However, they did not have the resources to manage the sheer scale of it all. This was our first big priority—get them what they needed to make it happen.
Since we acquired White Industries, we have ramped that team from four to over a dozen. As I write this, we are currently in another round of hiring for our KC Research Team, which will get parts ready for our online storefront. We have had a small team working on this all year, and the current tally is over 2,000 parts worth millions of dollars listed for sale.
As we continue to increase the staff at BAS Kansas City and continuously add more KC inventory to our website, we have started to list some of the aircraft in the field as well. These are aircraft that have long lists of parts available. Eventually, we will start disassembling these aircraft as we would any other. For now, you can see some of the aircraft available in the field and what parts and components are available.
The BAS Kansas City Sales Team, led by Matt Brewe, is ready to help you find what you need. BAS Kansas City has the resources to remove parts from aircraft in the field quickly and accurately, and we can ship those parts anywhere in the world very quickly.
Clinton McJenkin
Sales & Marketing Director
BAS Part Sales
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