Abu Dhabi-based Falcon Aviation Services will start offering FBO services from its new location at the UAE’s Dubai World Central Airport (DWC) at the beginning of July. One of three tenants in the executive terminal, the company expects to complete its exclusive portion by the end of the month. When completed, the 260,000 sq ft (24,000 sq m) facility will offer line service, maintenance and hangarage for business jets at DWC, including a wash bay.
Starting around the middle of July, the former Lone Star Executive Airport (CXO), now Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport, will offer U.S. Customs service from a newly constructed $2.4 million CBP facility. The 3,200-sq-ft building is located on the ramp next to the Galaxy FBO. Construction–funded by a public/private partnership consisting of Montgomery County, Conroe Industrial Development Council, FBO-operator Black Forest Ventures, The Woodlands Economic Development Partnership, and the Shenandoah Municipal Development District–began last September.
The service will incur a user fee and be staffed by U.S. Customs during regular hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and available after hours on demand. County-owned CXO, 46 miles outside Houston, has a 7,500-foot main runway. The newly added customs service will allow long-range business jets to fly direct from Central and South America, Canada and Europe, bypassing the congested metro-Houston airspace.
As General Electric phases in its headquarters relocation from Fairfield, Conn., to Boston over the next several months, the company has leased hangar space from Rectrix Aviation at Hanscom Field in Bedford, Mass. (KBED), to be the new location for its corporate flight department.
In September, GE expects to have its full complement of some 70 department employees, as well as two Leonardo-Finmeccanica AW139 helicopters and two Bombardier Challenger 605s, occupying the 60,000-sq-ft hangar. The hangar was previously occupied by Rectrix’s aircraft, which the FBO/charter operator will relocate to its other facilities in Massachusetts.
“Bedford was chosen based on its proximity to our headquarters, its capability for serving corporate air operations, and its fully capable FBO [Rectrix] that allow us to help enable GE business,” said Mike Cairo, GE, deputy chief security officer and flight operations manager.
General Electric already has a significant presence in Massachusetts, with nearly 5,000 employees across the state in businesses including oil, gas, energy management and aviation. For example, GE aircraft engines are engineered in Lynn, Mass.
With the Republican National Convention (RNC) set to descend on Cleveland next month, local FBOs are hoping to seize the opportunity to shine, among them the Cleveland Jet Center (CJC), the lone services provider at Cuyahoga County Airport.
The location has come a long way since early 2012 when it was placed into receivership, the result of a “perfect storm” of shaky finances, unrealistic expectations, questionable management and, for a company that opened for business in 2008, bad timing. Faced with mounting debt, the management distanced itself from CJC, retreated to a separate hangar on the airfield, and attempted to establish another separate FBO, which in turn failed a few months later.
CJC operated under temporary court-ordered management until it was acquired later that year by a local Cleveland businessman who discovered that even though the facility was only six years old, it and its equipment were in disarray, evidence of its shoestring budget. “Everything looked good but below the surface there was a lot of dilapidation and a lot of things that just weren’t maintained very well,” said Aaron Thayer, the location’s general manager, who joined the company under the new regime. “We had to invest a significant amount of capital in the equipment that was there and the resources that we needed to serve our customers reliably.” So far he estimates the company has spent some $2.5 million on improvements.
While the ownership, management and staff of the facility changed, its name did not, and according to Thayer that first year was spent assuring customers, “We’re not that company.” “Our initial focus was to forget about marketing, forget about trying to reach someone and bring them here; let’s just take care of who is already coming first before we try to expand our business to include folks who may not know about us,” he told AIN.
Since then, the UVAir FBO Network location has rebounded, seeing 10-percent growth year-over-year for the past four years. CJC pumped 1.3 million gallons of fuel last year, despite most of the flight departments on the field owning their own fuel farms. The location’s 45,000 sq ft of heated hangar space, which can accommodate the latest big business jets, is home to 17 turbine-powered aircraft ranging from a TBM 700 to a pair of Challenger 300s.
Occupying the ground floor of a three-story building, which also contains tenant offices, the FBO’s terminal was renovated last year and expanded to 10,000 sq ft with the movement of a tenant to an upper floor. Among its amenities are a passenger lounge, concierge service, a pair of A/V-equipped conference rooms seating 12 and eight, a café with complimentary snacks and drinks, a pilots’ lounge equipped with four leather-clad massage recliners, two snooze rooms, WSI flight planning and a 1,000-sq-ft exercise center with men’s and women’s showers. The facility is open from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., with after-hours callout service available.
More than anything else, the facility has worked to develop its customer service. “We believe in delivering an unparalleled service experience every time, so first impressions speak volumes,” said Thayer. “We want to make a first impression every single time.” As an example, he noted a recent situation when an aircraft headed into Hopkins was diverted at the last minute to Cuyahoga. A frantic dispatcher called the FBO saying the passenger had an urgent meeting in town, and with the sudden diversion they hadn’t had time to rearrange the ground transport for them. Thinking quickly, Thayer grabbed the keys to one of the FBO’s Cadillac Escalade crew cars, met the arriving aircraft on the ramp and drove the passenger to his meeting.
Preparation for the RNC began two years ago when Cleveland was announced as the host of the gathering, and Thayer noted some “unconventional” ways he and his staff have prepared for it, including visiting the former Tampa International Jet Center FBO (now Sheltair Tampa), which hosted event traffic in 2012, and speaking with its staff about how they handled the flocks of aircraft. In April Thayer and his staff volunteered at the Augusta Regional Airport FBO to help manage the crush of traffic for the Masters Golf tournament. “I guess controlled chaos would be the best way to explain 3,000 arrivals over the course of a week,” he told AIN. “We felt we were becoming more and more prepared, but seeing that first hand and just being there with that focus was an eye-opener for us.”
While CJC has 100,000 sq ft of ramp space, generally enough for 20 aircraft, the company has agreements with all the tenants and stakeholders at the airport to have enough space during the event to park up to 150 aircraft, a number that could certainly be in the realm of possibility given Cuyahoga, 11 miles from downtown, will be the only Cleveland airport that will operate without a TFR during the RNC. “Any GA aircraft headed to Burke [Lakefront Airport] or [Cleveland] Hopkins [International Airport] from July 17 to 22 are going to have to land at either Youngstown or Akron-Canton and clear TSA before being approved,” said Thayer, adding his FBO has also received queries from flight departments based at other local airports who are interested in basing at Cuyahoga for the week to avoid the requirements. In anticipation of that surge in traffic, the FBO will temporarily transform one of its conference rooms into an additional pilots’ lounge and has contracted with concierge service provider Envoy VIP to absorb the demand.
The company is looking at the RNC to make itself known on a grand scale. “There are too many people coming into Cleveland that just simply don’t know about our FBO and what we do, and even to some degree the advantages that Cuyahoga Airport can provide as well,” said Thayer. “We don’t want to be the best kept secret in Cleveland any longer.”
The airport is in the midst of a runway expansion project–extending it to 5,502 feet from 5,102 feet–and installing an engineered materials arrestor system (EMAS) at both ends. According to Thayer, Phase I of the project (excavation and drainage components) will conclude before the RNC, with the entire job taking two years to complete.
The Seoul-Gimpo Business Aviation Center (SGBAC), South Korea’s first purpose-built FBO, opened last week at Gimpo International Airport. A partnership between Korea Airport Corp. (KAC, owner of the multimillion-dollar facility) and Avjet Asia (its manager), the facility has a two-story business aviation terminal with onsite customs, immigration and quarantine service, passenger and crew lounges and a 10-seat a/v-equipped conference room. A 255,000-sq-ft hangar can accommodate up to eight G650s at the same time. Gimpo is nine miles (14 km) from Seoul’s downtown district. Incheon International Airport, the South Korean capital's main gateway, is 30 miles (48 km) from the city center.
Over the past decade, business aviation flights at Gimpo have grown to nearly 1,200 last year from 179 in 2005. While limits on landing slots and parking stands may be issues at other Asian airports, Gimpo has 77 parking stands and a surplus of slots to ensure on-time operations.
“Seoul-Gimpo Business Aviation Center is suited as the business aviation hub of Northeast Asia,” said KAC president and CEO Sung II-Hwan. “Its opening will be the catalyst for the future growth of the business aviation market.”
Corporate Flight Management (CFM) has been awarded a five-year lease to operate the FBO at Tennessee’s Cleveland Regional Jetport (RZR) through the RFP process. The company, which operates two other FBOs in the state (at Nashville’s John C. Tune Airport and Smyrna Airport) takes over at RZR on July 1 from Crystal Air. The latter has been the lone service provider at the airport since it opened in 2013, and was also one of the three companies to submit proposals.
The airport authority had considered self-management of the FBO when Crystal Air’s contract expired, following suit with most of the airports in the state, according to director of airport operations Mark Fidler, but in the end it decided to outsource the operation to CFM.
The three-yearold, 8,000-sq-ft FBO terminal was designed to reflect the character of eastern Tennessee, with natural earth tones, fireplaces, stonework and local wood. It has dedicated pilot lounges with snooze rooms, three audio-visual-equipped conference rooms (the largest seating 49 people) and a full catering kitchen. An observation deck is open to the public.
An unusual provision in the lease gives both parties the option to end the contract each year.
Success Aviation Services, a trip support company based at the UAE’s Sharjah International Airport, has expanded its supervisory ground handling services in Africa, with the announcement that the company will now provide support at Guinea’s capital city, Conakry.
“Conakry is a port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is known to serve as the economic, financial and cultural center of Guinea,” said Success CEO Khaled Shurbaji. “We expect more business aviation traffic to operate over there.”
According to Shurbaji, the company will have a 24/7 presence at the airport and will provide customized on-site coordination of all operational requirements and supervise any particular requests from passengers and crew. “We have recently employed a similar model with enormous success at other challenging and congested locations such as Algeria and Senegal,” he noted.
Success began operations in 2008 as a local Jordanian ground handler known as Master Jet. The company changed its name last year as it expanded across borders.
Canadian aircraft charter and management provider Chartright Air Group opened its first FBO last week, at Region of Waterloo International Airport (YKF), making it the second service provider located on the field.
Founded in 1987, and based at Toronto Pearson International but with bases across the country, Chartright acquired a four-year-old, 50,000-sq-ft hangar at YKF last year and has since refurbished it as part of an FBO. The 5,000-sq-ft terminal has passenger and crew lounges and offices, and on-site Canadian customs and immigration service is available 24/7 with advance notice.
The hangar can shelter aircraft up to a Boeing 757, or a score of Challengers, and maintenance service is offered for aircraft from small bizjets to airliners. The company also installed a 31,700-gallon (120,000 liter) Jet-A tank farm, with fuel supplied by Epic Aviation.
MAC Air Group opened its new 43,000-sq-ft FBO facility—MAC Jets—at Portland (Maine) International Jetport on Tuesday, adding full FBO services to its capabilities. This builds on the 57-year-old company’s aircraft charter and management service; aircraft sales, acquisition and leasing; and aircraft maintenance, parts and avionics sales and repair.
Its new FBO complex is the only operation on the south side of the airport field, allowing for easier access to major highways. Thus, it claims that customers can drive to downtown Portland in just seven minutes. The company's FBO is part of the Avfuel network.
Specializing in charter, sales and maintenance, MAC Air Group operates 18 jets and is an FBO customer itself—insight that it is using to provide good FBO service. “Our success is driven by our dedication to total customer satisfaction—our top priority along with safety,” said Allyn Caruso, owner of parent company Maine Aviation. “As a three-generation family business, we’re passionate about aviation and providing service that’s second-to-none” said Caruso.
Teterboro (N.J.) Airport-headquartered Meridian added a second Falcon 2000, the third aircraft in the region, to its growing West Coast charter fleet, as the service provider prepares to open its new FBO in Hayward, Calif., in late September. Overall, the company has 22 aircraft in its charter fleet.
The new West Coast facility will include a 6,300-sq-ft FBO terminal and offices, a 30,000-sq-ft hangar and a 3.5-acre ramp. The structures for both hangar and terminal are now standing, and the builders are working on the interiors, a company spokesman told AIN. It broke ground on the complex in July last year.
As at its Teterboro facility, Meridian will provide charter/management services, a Part 145 repair station and aircraft detailing at Hayward. Meridian has a 50-year lease on the property, and the construction is the first part of a multi-phase development plan, with an initial commitment of $10 million. A second 12,000-sq-ft terminal, two 40,000-sq-ft hangars and an additional seven acres of ramp space will be added in five to 10 years, according to Meridian CEO Ken Forester.
“Hayward Executive Airport was an easy decision for us when evaluating locations in the Bay area,” Forester said. “It is ideally situated between San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, and offers our customers most of the same amenities as the other regional airports, but without all of the congestion and traffic. In addition, the airport is open 24 hours, which is a big advantage for business jet travelers. We are looking forward to opening our doors very soon.”
Ross Aviation, which sold its network of 21 FBOs to Landmark Aviation in 2014, announced today that it acquired six former Landmark facilities, creating a new Ross FBO chain. These facilities are the six FBOs that the U.S. Department of Justice required Signature Flight Support to divest as part of its recent acquisition of Landmark Aviation. Those locations are the former Landmark FBOs at Washington Dulles, California’s Fresno Yosemite International, Scottsdale (Ariz.) Municipal, New York’s Westchester County, Jacqueline Cochran Regional in Thermal, Calif., and Alaska’s Ted Stevens International Airports.
“We look forward to once again serving general aviation customers with the acquisition of these six FBOs. We plan to quickly expand the Ross Aviation network to additional locations as opportunities present themselves within the U.S. and internationally,” said Ross Aviation president and CEO Jeff Ross. “We’re working with an experienced team across the country dedicated to providing exceptional services and a more competitive product.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
With just 30 days remaining before the 2016 Olympic Games opening ceremony, Lider Aviação announced that it has been selected as the official business aviation handler for Rio Tom Jobim International Airport during the event. For the 2014 World Cup, Jet Aviation handled high-density parking at the airport, which is now privatized under the RioGaleão consortium. Business jet parking space will be split 70/30 between Lider and Universal Weather and Aviation.
Airport director Cynthia Oliveira told AIN that Lider will operate Taxiway M, which was used for parking in 2014 for the World Cup and can handle 260 business jets if the mix remains the same. She noted that with 58 years of operating its own ramps and hangars, Lider has ample high-density parking experience and attended to 648 aircraft just at Jobim during the World Cup, including 80 percent of the movements for the final game.
Official estimates are for 900 to 1,000 business jet operations at Rio Jobim and Santos Dumont Airports on August 5, the opening day. Oliveira notes that the Olympics are concentrated in Rio and present challenges different from those posed by the World Cup’s dozen host cities—in all of which Lider has bases—and the handler will be bringing in personnel from these other bases to handle the demand.
Signature Flight Support acquired the 200th FBO in its worldwide network, the company announced today. The BBA Aviation subsidiary began operations last week at the former Airborne Aviation facility at New York’s Stewart International Airport, making it one of two aircraft handlers there. According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey which manages the airport, Airborne last week requested to break its lease with another year and a half remaining. Signature will assume the remainder of the lease and the facility will become a fully-branded Signature location offering the chain’s TailWins and Signature Status benefit programs.
The location at the Metro New York reliever airport becomes the company’s eighth FBO in the New York/New Jersey area, joining facilities at Teterboro, Westchester County/White Plains, Newark, Atlantic City, Syracuse, Trenton and Morristown. “Our long-standing, collaborative relationship with the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey is exemplary,” said Signature president and COO Maria Sastre. “Signature has invested heavily in the two states and we have a long-term optimistic view for business and general aviation in New York and New Jersey.”
“Today’s announcement highlights the Port Authority’s efforts to position the airport for growth while encouraging air service development beyond commercial and cargo,” noted Stewart Airport general manager Ed Harrison. “We look forward to this continued partnership as it helps strengthen our airport’s role as an economic driver that creates jobs for the region.”
Just in time for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week, Signature Flight Support has opened its new FBO at the city’s Burke Lakefront Airport, where it is the lone services provider. The new $9 million facility occupies four acres adjacent to the BBA Aviation subsidiary’s old FBO, which it will keep and use for tenant offices.
Its 6,000-sq-ft terminal, which has a design reflective of the city’s history as an industrial center, features a passenger lobby, conference room, bistro and coffee bar, pilots' lounge with snooze room and flight planning area. The facility also has a new 18,750-sq-ft hangar capable of sheltering aircraft up to a Gulfstream G650.
“Burke Lakefront Airport is an important component of the Cleveland airport system,” said interim port control director Fred Szabo. “We’re pleased that Signature has shown its commitment and confidence in Burke and helped us raise the level of service to our corporate customers.”
With the trend of consolidation continuing apace in the FBO industry, it seems no company is invulnerable to acquisition, as evidenced by Sheltair’s recent acquisition of Tampa International Jet Center (TIJC), a formerly fiercely independent, stand-alone location.
The FBO, one of two service providers at Florida’s Tampa International Airport (TPA), has consistently been one of the most highly regarded facilities in the country since it opened more than a decade ago. Long coveted by the big chains, the location attracted even more interest recently, according to former company president Phillip Botana, who remains with Sheltair as a senior vice president. “We’ve been approached by almost everybody in the business at some point or another in recent years to consider selling,” he noted. “Before the announcement and the closing, I’ve probably been called in this last year by more investment groups interested in getting into being a consolidator in this industry than ever before.”
Coupled with those eager suitors was the looming threat posed by Signature Flight Support, which in its February purchase of Landmark Aviation acquired the other FBO at TPA, one of the now 200 locations in its network. “Obviously the landscape has been changing, particularly in recent years with the fairly rapid consolidation by the bigger chains,” Botana told AIN. “I think we’ve come to realize over time that it is more and more difficult to compete with the marketing prowess of some of these big chains, particularly when they are on your airport.”
Despite the FBO’s continued success, Botana and TIJC’s owner still felt the financial jitters that continue to dog the economy and the industry. “We had the uncertainties of a presidential election and we’re seven years into a not-so-great recovery from a big recession, but there aren’t many recoveries that last much longer than seven years, so we started looking at what the next five to ten years might hold for us in terms of having a successful business and being able to compete.”
Once they made the decision to sell, TIJC’s leaders realized they would be able to decide who would acquire the FBO, and established a list of criteria for possible buyers, including a strong presence in the market and the state, as well as a company that the airport authority would perceive as a good tenant. “We built a nice little business here with a good reputation, and we would prefer that that culture didn’t get torn apart through an acquisition,” noted Botana. “That was important to us.” Also of concern was the future for the company’s employees.
Botana recalled an earlier conversation he had with Sheltair founder, chairman and CEO Jerry Holland, who had expressed interest in acquiring the location. The Fort Lauderdale-based company operates 10 FBOs in the state, so it met the first criterion. “The more I looked at his company, the more I realized it checked all the boxes for us,” he recalled. “We felt it was a good fit and decided that if we could put a deal together that made sense for both companies, we should probably consider doing that.”
Word of the deal began leaking out, initially causing unease among TIJC’s staff, and two months before the announcement Botana called a company-wide meeting. “I figured it was better that they heard what was happening from us rather than the rumor mill, which is usually only about 50 percent right,” he said.
“It was a lot of anxiety to begin with for the team members,” said Julie Silberman, the FBO’s former customer service director, who has since joined the chain’s marketing division. “We kept reassuring them that we’re all in this together. We’ve been through so much together over the years that we’re going to continue to be as tight knit as we are and I think that really helped a lot.”
Once the deal was finalized, Tom Craft, Sheltair’s regional vice president, and his staff held a meeting with the location’s employees, introducing them to Sheltair. “The biggest thing that concerned almost all of the employees was their benefits,” Craft told AIN. “It’s scary when you are with a company, you build up this big base, you’re proud of it and then here comes another company and it’s just going to take it over. I understand that.” Sheltair then met with each employee to assure everyone that his or her position was secure. Indeed, the only former TIJC staffer who wasn’t retained was the in-house accountant, whose work was no longer required because Sheltair has a centralized bookkeeping system.
Overall, Botana lauded the company for its efforts to welcome his staff. “Our people felt good about becoming part of Sheltair and not feeling like there was anything they lost,” he said, adding that their prospects for advancement have since improved greatly from the 27 positions at TIJC to the entire Sheltair network. Sheltair also brings an internal management training program to the equation.
It was not only the Tampa staff that needed reassurance but the customers as well. Botana and Silberman generated lists of the location’s top customers and contacted them directly to explain the transition and address questions or concerns. Sheltair’s real estate team followed up that contact, committing to honor all existing tenant agreements, and offering network benefits. So far, according to Craft, no tenants have left, and Sheltair has pledged to follow through on TIJC’s planned construction of a 32,000-sq-ft hangar, which will bring the location up to 140,000 sq ft of hangarage upon completion.
In terms of changes, Sheltair has largely adopted an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to the acquisition. “I think for the vast majority of people, almost nothing has changed other than the color of their uniforms and the way we handle the company name when we answer the phone,” said Botana, noting the synergies in the two companies’ operations and cultures. “They do things on a more centralized basis, so instead of carrying the invoices that need to be paid into an accounting person’s office to get the checks cut and processed, we have to put them in a FedEx envelope and send them to Fort Lauderdale to be paid.”
According to Sheltair COO Warren Kroppel, the transition went smoothly, with the integration of the two separate IT networks presenting the greatest challenge. “About a month after we had the acquisition, we had both our staffs sit down and we had an after-action review because there were some things we learned from them, and there were some things they learned from us.”
Less than two years after selling off his 19-location FBO chain to Landmark Aviation (which was then acquired by Signature Flight Support this past February), Jeffrey Ross is back in the FBO game. As part of Signature’s absorption of Landmark, the U.S. Department of Justice required the BBA Aviation subsidiary to divest six FBOs in places where it already had facilities. Those six locations were packaged by BBA and purchased by KSC Capital Partners, a private-equity firm specializing in luxury leisure and travel companies, which tapped Ross to lead them as a reconstituted Ross Aviation.
For Ross, this marks his third time assembling an FBO group, having sold off four individual FBOs before starting the first Ross Aviation in 2004. The chain, which kept the original names of companies as it acquired them, grew to become the fourth largest FBO network in the U.S. by the time of its sale to Landmark.
This latest iteration of Ross Aviation starts off with a strong nucleus, consisting of the two former Landmark locations at New York Westchester County Airport (HPN) and a facility at Washington-Dulles International, as well as locations in Scottsdale, Ariz., Thermal and Fresno, Calif., and Anchorage, Alaska. Since Signature acquired the Landmark Aviation name in the deal, the six locations have been rebranded as Ross Aviation. Yet, as Ross noted, old habits die hard: “If we are able to acquire an FBO where there is a real reason to keep the same name, there’s no rule against that. We will do that.”
At HPN, one of the two facilities acquired by Ross is the lone FBO there still operating under an artificial weight restriction for aircraft it is allowed to service, a regulation enacted during the 1990s, initially intended to protect general aviation at the airport. Million Air, which operates the other such FBO, recently had that restriction repealed as part of its commitment to build a $70 million complex at HPN. Since one of the new Ross facilities at the airport carries no such restrictions, Ross is uncertain whether he will pursue having it removed at the second FBO.
At Dulles, where it is now one of two service providers, the company will continue with the original Landmark plans for a multimillion-dollar total refurbishment of the facility, and has relocated to a temporary structure as the work progresses. “We want to make sure we get completed by the end of the year, so it’s ready for the [Presidential] inauguration,” said Ross. “First of all it’s a whole lot of business, but it’s also a great time to showcase your FBO.”
Ross returns to Scottsdale Airport, where it previously operated the other FBO on the field. As part of Landmark’s Ross Aviation purchase, it was required to divest the Scottsdale Air Center, bought by Signature, which in turn was required to divest the former Landmark location, essentially bringing Ross full circle. “Now we’ve moved across the field,” noted Ross. “Landmark did a significant renovation to its facility. It wasn’t ever bad, but it looks much better now.”
In Thermal, Ross reacquired the same FBO it owned before the Landmark purchase, while at Fresno it will renovate an existing facility at the airport over the next six months and relocate upon completion. Signature will retain the existing FBO facility to house its maintenance operation at the airport.
Ross bolstered his staff with industry talent such as Cy Farmer, most recently Landmark’s vice president of European operations and special projects, as COO; Steve Gampp, CFO with the former Ross Aviation, returns to the same position; and Steve Lee, a former president of Signature Flight Support and industry consultant who has joined as director of business development.
Ross started his last chain in 2004 and over the course of a decade, in a reference to his penchant for not branding locations, built it into the “largest FBO chain nobody has heard of.” Since Ross has been through this exercise twice already, it is safe to wonder when he will once again sell. “It depends on how successful we are in expanding the portfolio,” he told AIN. “Our plan would be to hang around for a long time if we’re able to make attractive investments.” Despite the extinction of Landmark and the legal elimination of Signature as a player at the six locations at the heart of the new Ross Aviation, Ross is not concerned about finding an eventual buyer for another substantial FBO consolidation.
“There are some other players out there,” said Ross, noting that Ross Aviation is KSL Capital Partners’ first foray into the FBO business. “There are private-equity firms that would find a portfolio such as ours attractive.”
But such end-game strategies lie far in the future. “Our first project is to operate these facilities to the best of our ability,” Ross noted. “Once the operations are in a comfortable stage, then we are going to move to stage two: negotiating additional acquisitions.”
In 2005, Maine’s Brunswick Naval Air Station was one of the many military bases around the U.S. slated for closure under the Base Realignment and Closure program. In operation since 1943, first as a training base then later during the Cold War as a home to sub-hunting patrol aircraft, the facility was abandoned by the Navy at the end of 2009 and officially decommissioned.
Unlike many other bases, Brunswick got a second chance at life when the publicly owned Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority was given the facility to convert into Brunswick Executive Airport. “The fate of Brunswick was sort of up in the air for a while, and luckily our redevelopment authority and the whole congressional delegation in Maine was strongly behind making it a public-use airport,” said Peter Eichleay, the owner and president of Flight Level Aviation, which operates four FBOs in the U.S. Northeast, including the one at Brunswick. “Obviously we’re pretty glad they made the decision to open it up.”
The decision to move into Brunswick and start at an airport from scratch wasn’t an easy one for the company. “There was no history to go on; this had been only a military airport, so there was no traffic level that we had as square one to go off,” Eichleay noted. “But given the proximity to all these great locations, we thought it was worth a shot.”
The airport officially made its debut as a public-use facility on April 1, 2011, and Massachusetts-based Flight Level has been the service provider there from the beginning. One might say it opened under a cloud that April Fools’ Day, according to Eichleay. “Day one we got about six inches of snow and they had to have all the snow removal equipment fully deployed to get open in time,” he recalled. “From that point we were thinking, ‘Oh boy, this is a bad omen; we’re building a brand-new facility and fuel farm and this is what it’s going to be like.’”
More Development Ahead
Instead, from that moment, things have been on an upswing for the FBO, which has seen 20 percent year-over-year increases in uplift and operations in each of its five years of existence. It was converted from existing structures at the cost of approximately half a million dollars. The 5,000-sq-ft terminal was gutted and given a complete facelift, which was completed in 2014. It has passenger and pilot lounges with high-definition TVs and a shingled CSR desk reminiscent of a Maine summer cottage. Also provided are a snooze room, showers, crew cars and on-site car rental.
The facility occupies 10 acres at the airport, and with 60,000 sq ft of heated hangar space (renovated by the Redevelopment Authority) capable of sheltering aircraft up to a Boeing 737-800 there is enough space to handle the Casco Bay summer home traffic, which makes up a large portion of the location’s clientele. The company will lease a new 20,000-sq-ft hangar that the Redevelopment Authority intends to build within the next two years. That structure will also be able to accommodate the latest long-range business jets.
While the peak summer tenancy can attract everything from Falcons to Globals, the location is home year-round to a Citation CJ4 and a King Air 200, not to mention Eichleay’s own Cirrus. Once, after a flight crew landed at Brunswick too late to reach their airline flight out of Providence, Rhode Island by car, the FBO’s Cirrus-current general manager fired up the aircraft and flew them there with enough time to catch the flight.
Among the improvements the company made to the site was the installation of a fuel farm for 20,000 gallons of jet-A and 15,000 gallons of avgas. The Shell-branded facility employs three refuelers: 8,000-gallon and 3,000-gallon jet fuel trucks and a 1,000-gallon 100LL refueler. The FBO pumps several hundred thousand gallons of fuel a year. For jet-A customers, the location offers a bonus in the form of the state’s most famous export. “If you take certain minimum uplifts on the jet side, we throw in some lobsters that we can crate and cool and send out with you,” Eichleay told AIN. The live crustaceans are packed in Styrofoam coolers with seaweed, which will keep them alive for more than 24 hours.
Over the next year, the location, which is open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. with callout available, plans to install a self-service avgas pump. Another vestige of the location’s military days is a de-icing pad with fluid reclamation capability that was also refurbished by the company, allowing it to perform Type I and IV de-icing on up to airliner-size aircraft.
The airport receives a lot of business resulting from its proximity to Bowdoin College and the Bath Iron Works, a General Dynamics shipyard that specializes in building surface warships for the U.S. Navy. An unexpected boost comes from the former P-3 Orion patrol squadron (relocated to Jacksonville, Fla.) that regularly returns to its former stomping grounds to conduct training over the moody North Atlantic. Every other year, as it has for the last three decades, the airport hosts the Great State of Maine Airshow, with the FBO serving the likes of the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds demonstration teams.
Hillsboro Aviation, one of three service providers at Oregon’s Portland-Hillsboro Airport (KHIO), unveiled its new FBO last month. Located at the north end of the airport, the 19,000-sq-ft terminal building houses a reception area with fireplace, pilots’ lounge, snooze room, showers, flight planning area, exercise room, crew cars, onsite car rental and electric vehicle charging stations. An attached 32,000-sq-ft hangar can accommodate aircraft up to a G650 and serves as a base for Hillsboro’s maintenance, avionics, parts sales and charter fleet operations.
“The expansion has given us the space we need to accommodate our traffic and provides a luxurious experience to our customers who choose KHIO, an experience we know our clientele expects,” said company owner and president Max Lyons. The airport, 15 minutes from downtown Portland, offers a 6,600-foot main runway and, according to the FAA, sees 700 operations a day.
After two years of development, Los Angeles-bases Lynk Remote Technologies is debuting its new HangarBot aircraft hangar monitoring system this week at EAA AirVenture (Booth 4060D). According to the manufacturer, the system provides users with the ability to control, automate and secure general aviation hangars remotely through network connectivity. It consists of a wall-mounted hub with sensors to monitor and control hangar temperature, video surveillance and other features, such as instantly opening the hangar door, all through commands from the HangarBot mobile app.
Users can select from three cellular data plan options, which will allow them to also use the device as a Wi-Fi hotspot. “We wanted to offer a practical solution with low monthly data service costs,” said system inventor and company president Morgan Walker. “So we created a unique system from the ground up that minimizes message size between the server and HangarBot, and by processing the routine tasks directly on HangarBot.”
Once a user is registered, the lowest level data plan is automatically activated, and customers can adjust their accounts at any time through the company’s website. “Now owners can protect and manage the environment around the aircraft easily and with confidence, anywhere in the world,” noted Walker.
South Africa’s Lanseria Jet Centre has completed its remodeling and transition into a Signature Select affiliate, making it one of more than 200 locations in the aircraft service provider's global network. The facility, located at Lanseria International Airport, offers wine and refreshments, Wi-Fi, concierge services, dedicated crew lounge and flight planning and weather, along with a crew bus for airport transfers.
For passengers, there is a private lounge with separate meeting rooms. On-site line maintenance, aircraft detailing, lavatory and water services are also available, as is fuel coordination. In additon, Lanseria Jet Centre will offer the full slate of Signature Flight Support programs, including the Signature Tailwins pilot reward program.
The Johannesburg-area, non-slot-constrained Lanseria Airport is open 24/7, with customs and immigration available. For Signature, this represents its second location in Africa, as the BBA Aviation subsidiary also operates an FBO at Cape Town International Airport.
