Quick answer: Aviation Technical Services (ATS) is Everett’s second-largest aerospace employer after Boeing, with about 800 people working from a 500,000-square-foot hangar at the south end of Paine Field. ATS operates the largest Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) facility on the U.S. West Coast — capable of holding up to 14 commercial airliners simultaneously — plus an adjacent 50,000-square-foot component repair shop. The company anchors a workforce category most Everett residents don’t know exists: airframe MRO, the discipline that touches commercial jets after they leave the Boeing factory and need to come back.

Aviation Technical Services in Everett: The Complete 2026 Guide to Paine Field’s MRO Anchor and Snohomish County’s #2 Aerospace Employer

Everett has an aerospace identity problem. Almost every conversation about the local industry starts with Boeing — the 737 North Line, the 777-9 ramp, the KC-46 cadence, the Future of Flight tour. That isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete. The second-largest aerospace employer in this city operates roughly two miles from Boeing’s main entrance, in a hangar most residents drive past without realizing what’s inside.

That company is Aviation Technical Services — ATS. About 800 employees. A 500,000-square-foot airframe Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) hangar at the south end of Paine Field. A 50,000-square-foot component repair facility next door. And the title of the largest MRO on the U.S. West Coast.

This is the complete 2026 guide to ATS in Everett — what the company does, where it sits in the Snohomish County aerospace economy, why MRO matters as the local industry preps for a 737 MAX 10 North Line activation and a 777-9 delivery wave, and what the workforce looks like.

What ATS Does in Everett

ATS is a heavy-maintenance MRO operator. In plain English: airlines fly their planes to Paine Field and ATS technicians take them apart, inspect the structure, fix what’s worn or damaged, modify what needs upgrading, and put them back together to fly another decade. The industry calls these visits checks — A-checks, C-checks, and the deep structural D-check — and the heavy ones happen in hangars exactly like the one ATS operates at the south end of the airport.

The Everett campus runs two integrated facilities:

The 500,000-square-foot airframe hangar — bay space for up to 14 commercial airliners simultaneously. A Boeing 737 NG is roughly 130 feet long; the building can fit more than a dozen of them under one roof.
The 50,000-square-foot component repair facility — where structural, hydraulic, and electrical components come off the airframes and get repaired by technicians trained on specific systems.

Together those two buildings give ATS what the trade press calls a “full-service” MRO posture: an airline can ship the whole airplane to Everett and ship the parts that come off it to the same campus.

The Building’s History: Tramco, Goodrich, ATS

The hangar is not new. It was originally built and operated by Tramco, sold to Goodrich, and then sold to ATS in the fall of 2007. That timeline matters because it means the same physical footprint has been an MRO operation in Everett for decades. The institutional knowledge — the technicians who have seen the same airframe come back for its third C-check, the engineers who know how the supply of certain parts behaves — runs deep. When someone in Snohomish County says they “work at ATS,” there is a reasonable chance their parents or their first supervisor worked at Tramco in the same building.

Where ATS Sits in the Snohomish County Aerospace Economy

Boeing remains the dominant aerospace employer in Everett — the 737 MAX 10 North Line activation in summer 2026 alone is supposed to add hundreds of factory positions, layered on top of the 777-9 program and KC-46 deliveries. ATS sits in a different position on the supplier map: not building new airplanes, but maintaining the in-service fleet.

That position has structural value. When Boeing slows or speeds up production — both have happened in the last five years — MRO demand follows a different curve. Airlines fly older airplanes longer when new deliveries slip; that is more MRO work, not less. When new airplanes do arrive, the older ones in the fleet still come due for their scheduled checks. MRO is countercyclical to factory production in ways that smooth the local aerospace job market.

For Snohomish County, that means ATS is the second pillar — after Boeing — of an aerospace ecosystem that also includes Aviation Technical Services’ supplier network, the 5,200-worker aerospace shortage the county is trying to close, and emerging entrants like ZeroAvia at Paine Field.

What ATS Works On

The Everett facility’s bread and butter is narrowbody and widebody airframe MRO. That includes Boeing 737 family work (NG and MAX), 757s, 767s, and 777s, plus Airbus A320 family aircraft. ATS publishes an FAA-certificated repair station list for the work scope; the practical effect is that almost any commercial airliner you might see flying in or out of a North American airport could end up at Paine Field for a heavy check.

Beyond scheduled maintenance, ATS does cabin reconfigurations (when an airline buys an airplane and wants different seat counts or class layouts), structural repair (post-incident or post-corrosion), modification engineering, and avionics upgrades. The component shop next door supports rotables — the parts that come off airplanes, get repaired or overhauled, and go back onto the airplane fleet later.

Why MRO Matters in an Aerospace Town

It is easy to think about Everett’s aerospace economy as a Boeing factory and the suppliers that feed it. That model misses the after-market. Every airplane Boeing has ever delivered eventually needs heavy maintenance, and the MRO sector is where that work happens. Globally, commercial aviation MRO is a multi-tens-of-billions-per-year industry. On the West Coast of the United States, the largest single facility doing that work is at the south end of Paine Field.

That has implications for workforce. The skills an ATS airframe mechanic uses overlap heavily with what a Boeing factory mechanic uses — sheet metal, composites, hydraulics, electrical, structures — but with a different rhythm. Factory work is repetitive at scale. MRO work is investigative: each airplane comes in with a different set of issues. The two career paths cross-train people who can move between them as the local economy shifts.

The 2026 Context: Why ATS Matters Right Now

Three things are converging in Everett’s aerospace economy in 2026 that put ATS in a useful spotlight:

1. The 737 MAX 10 North Line activation. Boeing’s 737 MAX 10 will be built exclusively in Everett, with the North Line going live this summer. New airplanes need eventual MRO. ATS sits two miles from where they will be built.

2. The 777-9 ramp into 2027. Lufthansa just confirmed first 777-9 delivery slips to Q1 2027. The fleet that customers eventually accept will need scheduled maintenance over its life — work an MRO with 777 capability is positioned to capture.

3. The 5,200-worker aerospace shortage. Snohomish County is short thousands of skilled aerospace workers across factory and MRO. The pipeline that fills Boeing also fills ATS. That makes ATS a quiet but important participant in any conversation about local workforce development.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Aviation Technical Services located in Everett?

ATS operates from the south end of Paine Field, along Airport Road in Everett. The campus includes a 500,000-square-foot airframe hangar and an adjacent 50,000-square-foot component repair facility.

How many people does ATS employ in Everett?

About 800 people work at the ATS Everett campus. That makes ATS the second-largest aerospace employer in Everett after Boeing.

What is MRO, and why does it matter for Everett?

MRO stands for Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul — the heavy-maintenance sector of commercial aviation that services airplanes already in service with airlines. It matters for Everett because ATS operates the largest MRO facility on the U.S. West Coast at Paine Field, anchoring a workforce sector that runs countercyclical to new-aircraft production.

How many airplanes can fit in the ATS Everett hangar?

The 500,000-square-foot airframe hangar has bay space for up to 14 commercial airliners simultaneously.

Who used to own the ATS Everett hangar?

The building was originally Tramco, then Goodrich, then sold to ATS in the fall of 2007. The footprint has been an MRO operation in Everett for decades.

What aircraft types does ATS work on?

The Everett facility services Boeing 737 family (NG and MAX), 757, 767, and 777 aircraft, plus Airbus A320 family. The component shop supports rotable parts across those fleets.

Is ATS hiring in Everett in 2026?

ATS recruits airframe mechanics, avionics technicians, sheet-metal mechanics, structures specialists, and engineers as part of the broader Snohomish County aerospace pipeline. The county-wide aerospace shortage is roughly 5,200 workers across factory and MRO sectors, and ATS is one of the larger employers competing for that talent.

Is ATS related to Boeing?

No. ATS is a separate company that operates an MRO business adjacent to Boeing’s Everett factory. The two share the Paine Field campus but are independent employers with different workforce needs and different customers.

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