Garmin has expanded its aviation footprint with the opening of a new flight test and office complex at Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona, a move that underscores the company’s growing emphasis on aircraft certification programs for its portfolio of avionics products.
The facility includes two adjacent hangars totaling about 75,000 square feet, along with office space designed to accommodate roughly 75 employees. Garmin said the site will support its aircraft certification and flight test organizations as demand continues to grow across its aviation product lines.
“This expansion represents Garmin’s continued investment in infrastructure that supports growth and innovation in our aviation business segment,” said Phil Straub, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Aviation. He added that the capabilities at Mesa will help extend airworthiness approvals and expand market coverage for Garmin’s products.
Mesa Gateway Airport offers three parallel runways, two longer than 10,000 feet, providing flexibility for flight testing across a wide range of aircraft types. Garmin also pointed to the region’s generally clear weather as a key advantage, allowing more consistent year-round flight operations. The Mesa site joins Garmin’s existing flight operations centers in New Century, Kansas, and Salem, Oregon.
The Phoenix-area location fits well with Garmin’s broader engineering presence in Arizona. The company has maintained a regional engineering hub for more than 25 years, beginning in Tempe before expanding to Chandler and, more recently, Scottsdale following its acquisition of AeroData in 2019. Garmin said the proximity of those sites will help support hiring and collaboration among engineering, certification, and flight test teams.
The opening of a dedicated flight test and certification center reflects how central aviation reamins Garmin’s business, and also highlights how far the company has come since its early days. Garmin was founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao, both engineers at avionics maker BendixKing, who recognized the potential of satellite-based navigation well before it was widely embraced in aviation. When their employer declined to make a major investment in GPS technology, Burrell and Kao struck out on their own, naming the company Garmin as a blend of their first names.
Garmin first made its mark with handheld GPS units for pilots, before moving into panel-mount navigators and, eventually, fully integrated flight decks now found in everything from piston singles to business jets.
The new Mesa facility adds another chapter to that evolution at a time when one of Garmin’s ongoing challenges has been keeping pace with the volume of certification work required by aircraft manufacturers and other customers. By expanding its in-house flight test and airworthiness approval capacity, Garmin is aiming to shorten certification timelines and better support the growing number of aircraft platforms that rely on its avionics across the general aviation and business aviation markets.
