That cluster includes relatively well-known companies such as airline maintenance firm Timco Aviation Services Inc., charter service Piedmont Hawthorne and aircraft seat maker B/E Aerospace.

But it also includes dozens of smaller companies, from repair firms to flight schools. Last fall, a Rockingham County company, Opus Aircraft LLC, announced it would start building light-sport aircraft.

"There's a cottage industry outside of the airlines and the Timcos around here that goes pretty strongly," said Ed Frye, director of Guilford Technical Community College's Aviation Center.

Despite good press, Frye said, many people in the area aren't aware of how strong the aviation industry is here. As FedEx's air cargo hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport prepares to open in 2009, the aviation cluster is expected to grow even bigger.

Though it's difficult to get an exact count of how many people in the Triad are employed in aviation- related jobs, Frye estimates that it's well above 2,000 people.

Antilles Seaplanes is launching a sales effort and doing the final engineering work to reinvent the Grumman G-21 Goose, an amphibious plane first built in the 1930s. About 15 of the original Gooses are still in use, some commercially.

Henderson, the president of Gibsonville plane-part maker Aero Accessories Inc., and Manuel, a CPA, have spent millions of dollars to get this far.

"We're comfortable enough now that we're going to go out and get deposits (from customers)," Manuel said.

The planes will cost $1.3 million to $2.2 million each, depending on a customer's engine choice, and Antilles Seaplanes will also make and sell the parts for the aircraft.

To date, Manuel said, 19 people have said they'd be interested in buying the plane, which appeals to everyone from rich hobbyists, such as singer Jimmy Buffet who visited the company a couple of years ago, to small airline owners and charter services.

Part of the appeal of the plane is its ability to land on water. The Goose is, almost literally, a flying boat. When it lands on water it rests on its belly, not pontoons, giving it a lower center of gravity and making it far more stable in choppy water than a seaplane on floats. The plane can carry up to 10 passengers.

Workers at Antilles will update the classic aircraft, giving it modern electronics and modern engines. But the aircraft design itself has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for decades, sparing Antilles the estimated $15 million to $20 million it would normally cost to have the Federal Aviation Administration approve a plane design.

The company plans to initially produce one plane a month, but expand to two or three planes per month a couple years down the road, Manuel said. If it makes 30 planes a year and sells them for an average price of $1.75 million, it could generate more than $50 million per year in revenue.

Henderson estimates that over several years, the company might find a market for as many as 250 airplanes.

"The world is crying out for an honest to goodness seaplane, not an adaptation of a seaplane," Henderson said.

Manuel and Henderson have hired Dave Hamrick, a pilot and pilot instructor who worked at US Airways for 24 years before retiring, to join Antilles Seaplanes as director of flight training. He's developed a training program to that will enable pilots to become qualified to fly the plane and therefore qualify for lower insurance rates.

Most of the assembly of the planes will be done in Gibsonville, but the wings and engines will be put on at the Burlington Airport.