Salt, vog and sun. Your airframe sits in all three.

How much does aircraft ceramic coating cost?

Coating is priced per linear foot: $100 per foot of fuselage plus $50 per foot of wingspan for Stealth Diamond Borograph, and $200 plus $100 per foot for Liquid PPF with Borograph on top.

A Cessna 172 at 27 feet of fuselage and 36 feet of wingspan works out to $4,500 for Borograph. The same aircraft with Liquid PPF underneath is $9,000.

Helicopters are fuselage only — there is no wingspan figure and rotor blades are not coated.

Why is wingspan priced at half the fuselage rate?

Because a wing is a simpler surface than a fuselage — large, flat, accessible and fast to work, where a fuselage is curved, interrupted and full of detail that has to be worked around by hand.

The rate reflects the labour honestly rather than charging one blanket number per foot and hoping it averages out. You pay more for the part that takes longer.

Is Borograph approved for use on aircraft?

Yes. Borograph is an FAA-friendly coating — no primer, no solvent flash and no cure oven, so it goes on in your hangar or on the ramp without any of the infrastructure a paint process needs.

That said, your maintenance manual and your A&P have the final word on any product that touches your airframe, and we expect to be asked. We will provide product documentation before we start.

We do not touch pitot tubes, static ports, de-ice boots, windscreens with existing crazing, or any surface your maintenance manual restricts — unless your A&P signs off in writing.

What is the four-hour minimum, and does it apply to coating?

The four-hour minimum per technician applies to hourly work only — detailing, interiors and prep. It does not stack on top of a coating quoted by the foot.

Hourly work is $150 per technician per hour, four-hour minimum. That covers interior and exterior detailing, brightwork, belly cleaning and heavy paint prep.

If you book a coating, the per-foot price is the price. The minimum only comes into it if you also want hourly work on top.

What do I need to supply?

Two things: soap and chemicals approved for your airframe, and ramp or hangar access with escort.

Chemicals. You supply them, per your maintenance manual and FAA guidance. Different airframes have different restrictions and we are not going to guess on yours. We bring the coating, pads, towels, machines and water management.

Access. Badging, escort onto the tarmac and hangar access are arranged on your side. We arrive with IDs and certificates of insurance on request, and we work to whatever your FBO or operator requires.

What is included in the coating price, and what is extra?

Wash, decontamination, and tar and sap removal are included. Heavy prep is billed hourly at $150 per technician per hour.

Heavy prep means oxidation, exhaust staining, filiform corrosion cleanup, belly grime and old wax that has to be stripped before a coating can bond. On an island airframe, exhaust staining and salt deposits are usually the two that need real time.

We inspect and quote the prep before we start. No discovering work halfway through and billing for it.

Why coat an aircraft on the Big Island specifically?

Salt and vog. A parked aircraft on this island sits in marine aerosol, and when the trades are blowing it sits in what the USGS calls droplets with “the corrosive properties of dilute battery acid.”

Salt is hygroscopic, so it keeps pulling moisture out of humid air and keeps working on aluminium and fasteners long after it settled. That is the mechanism behind corrosion in places that never see standing water.

A coating gives both of them a hard surface they cannot bond to, so a wash actually removes them instead of moving them around. It also makes the airframe markedly easier to keep clean, which on a working aircraft is most of the value.