Charlotte Aircraft Corporation is a company headquartered in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...

which deals in used aircraft and aircraft parts. The company was founded by Jenks Caldwell Sr. in 1953. Today the company is run by his son Jenks Caldwell Jr. The company’s main business is reselling refurbished aircraft parts which it acquires by purchasing used aircraft and stripping them of their useful parts, storing them until required, and re-furbishing them before sale to the customer. The company also has a history of engine modification. In the 1950s the company refitted Wright R-2600 engines for the

DC-4 The Douglas DC-4 is an American four-engined (piston), propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s. ...

Locations

* Headquarters: Delta Airbase,

(): Sometime in the late 1950s the company acquired Delta Airbase, an airfield located off WT Harris Blvd in Charlotte, NC and moved it operations there from Charlotte Douglas Airport. Delta Airbase was created by some people from the Mississippi Delta area who moved to Charlotte to establish an airfield and operation to train pilots during World War II (hence the name Delta Airbase). In the 1960s the company purchased a large number of ex-Eastern Airlines DC-6s & DC-7s. These were flown into Delta Airbase and parted out. Sometime in the past 20 years the airstrip was shortened and some of the land was used to develop an apartment complex. * Laurinburg-Maxton Airport (): The company has a sizable operation at Laurinburg-Maxtion Airport where it flies in aircraft and reduces them to parts. Aircraft such as 747s, 737s, 727s, DC-10 and DC-9s are visible from perimeter roads in various stages of stripping of usable parts.

Museum and Film aircraft

In 2006, the forward fuselage of the first 747 purchased by Northwest Airlines was removed from the airplane at Maxton and taken and installed in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. A Boeing 727 aircraft was trucked from Maxton to Massachusetts for use in the Tom Cruise movie

Knight and Day ''Knight and Day'' is a 2010 American satirical action comedy film directed by James Mangold and starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The film was the second on-screen collaboration of Cruise and Diaz, following the 2001 film ''Vanilla Sky''. ...

References

{{reflist Aircraft manufacturers of the United States