ARLINGTON — When John Sessions imported and restored MiG-29 roared aloft from Arlington Airport in late January, the flight made news headlines across the Pacific Northwest, and around the world via YouTube videos and Internet sites.

In more than 30 countries of the world, including India, Iran and Cuba, the MiG-29 is still classified as a significant frontline fighter plane.

Still, other world air forces have surplused some of their planes for private buyers such as Sessions, who plans to sell the plane, buy two more MiG-29s to restore and contribute the sale of those planes to his nonprofit Historic Flight Foundation at Paine Field.

But while the media spotlight was on the MiG-29, Tim Morgan was quietly enjoying his own revelry off camera, remembering the challenges he and his crew at Morgan Aircraft Restoration had faced as they refurbished and reassembled the Mach 2 fighter plane for Sessions flight.

“Tim Morgan and I have had the pleasure of partnership in (the MiG 29s) restoration,” Sessions wrote in his blog on the Historic Flight Foundation website, www.historicflight.org. “We undertook this project to demonstrate a small foundation could restore to top standards one of the most advanced and elegant aircraft of the modern era. That we did is tribute to the collection of aviation devotees at Arlington Field, in particular the employees of Morgan Aircraft Restoration…”

In fact, Morgan and Sessions have partnered on several projects in recent years. Morgan’s crew worked on Grumpy, the restored B-25 Sessions flew to Paine Field from England in 2010 and painted the DeHavilland Beaver that’s on display at the Historic Flight Foundation hangar, among other projects.

Now he’s working on restoration of Sessions’ Canadian CT-33, an early jet trainer from the 1950s that eventually will be reassembled at Historic Flight Foundation as an attraction for crowds visiting the HFF displays at Paine Field.

“We’ve done things together for years, since the early 1990s,” Morgan said. “We’ve developed a friendship. He was even crazy enough to do a MiG-29 with me.”

And a crazy time it was. Sessions bought the plane six years ago but it was shipped in two segments via the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, apparently to avoid having a high-tech fighter plane vulnerable to hijacking by terrorists.

For lack of securing a proper import license by the Pacific shipper, half of the plane sat in China for two years. Finally, freed by a Chinese judge, it arrived at Morgan’s hangar in parts.

“We also had to go through a lot of paperwork with government agencies, including the U.S. State Department. Actually, the paperwork was the easy part of the whole thing,” Morgan said, grinning.

“The plane in general is a simple system but in detail its very complicated. Fortunately, we had 29 manuals in English that we got from the Indian Air Force,” he said. “But, when the book says go to a particular valve as part of the check list, it may sometimes take a week to find the exact valve. During the restoration, we bought replacement parts where they were needed, if we could, but often we had to manufacture them ourselves.”

Parts problems were tough at times, but the MiG-29s electrical system was often a worse headache, he said.

“An onboard computer checks things like fuel and hydraulic systems and verifies the electrical system is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, then that information goes to another computer in the plane, which reports back to other computers and correlates all the data, including instruments that measure fuel flow rates, airspeed and altitude. Very complicated,” Morgan said.

But Morgan’s aviation background was exactly what was needed to get through the complicated MiG-29 experience.

Growing up in Eastern Washington, he worked in his father’s aviation business near Spokane, mostly repairing and modifying crop-dusting aircraft. He learned to fly early with his father, even before he earned his license and became a legal pilot, he said.

The first plane he bought was a Cessna 172, later advancing to a Cessna 210 and then to military aircraft. In the 1980s, he moved to Seattle, worked for Collins Aviation at Boeing Field, then got involved with military aircraft restoration at the airfield with Joe Clark, inventor of the winglets used on most of today’s commercial airliners.

In 1991, he set up business at Arlington Airport, working on aircraft maintenance and restoration, becoming president of Morgan Aircraft Restoration.

“I’m one of those presidents that also does a lot of janitorial work when times are slow,” he said with a laugh. Presently the business employs six people but “November to March is the slack time of the year. I’ll usually hire up to nine people later in the year, particularly if the economy picks up again.”

Along with restoration work, he has an ongoing contract for producing those familiar winglets for Boeing’s 767, 737-300 and 737-500 and uses his state-of-the-art painting and drying chambers to add colorful liveries to a variety of aircraft.

But he also has other businesses, including Morgan Aircraft Ltd. and M-Cubed Co. LLC, companies involved in purchasing and importing surplus military aircraft. Several years ago, with his brother, a corporate Gulfstream pilot in Florida, he imported and sold two MiG-23s, variable swept-wing fighters similar to U.S. Air Force F-111s. They were the first MiG-23s to be licensed in the U.S.

Several years ago, he began importing Czechoslovakian-designed L-39 fighters from Europe for American customers. One of them is still in his hangar, a plane he loves to fly. Both he and his partner in the L-39 purchase aren’t ready to give it up yet.

“It’s a beautiful plane, he said, gazing admiringly at the sleek, swept-wing fighter plane with the Czech Republic military markings in his hangar. “My investment partner and I are still enjoying having it around. Actually, it’s the plane used for training pilots before they move to the MiG-29, since the cockpits are so similar.”

Tim Morgan can be reached at 360-435-9755.