Entrepreneur pilots with a zest for aviation are zeroing in on transport assets that for years have floundered under state and local control - airports.
In Virginia, Tommy Grimes is applying a mixture of new investment, revitalised maintenance services and light aircraft sales to invigorate several airports. In Maryland, well-known Piper, Cessna and Pilatus dealer John Foster is on a similar vector.
Both men, armed with investors, distributorships for major airframers and colleagues with aviation expertise, have taken over handling and operations at previously low-activity municipal airports, sowed the seeds for economic growth and watched as business has flourished.
VICIOUS SPIRAL
Grimes cites a vicious economic cycle as the root cause of the problem at many city- and county-owned airports: officials take over fixed-base operator concessions thinking they will make money and bring in more aircraft, but the tenants want cheaper fuel, so the operators lower the fuel price. But without the fuel revenue, the airport can no longer afford to offer other services like flight training, sales and maintenance.
This paralysis also stunts long-term planning. "An airport plan is in most cases not even remotely linked to a business plan, it's a shopping list," says Grimes' partner Phil Solomon.
 |
|---|
To reverse the downward spiral, local governments are increasingly contracting out the business aspects of their airports. In 2004, Grimes and his two partners won a proposal to take over operations at Hanover County airport near Richmond, with its 1,646m (5,400ft) runway.
Their company, Heart of Virginia Aviation (HOVA), invested in the opportunity by launching a "full-service" FBO, which in turn meant refurbishing the terminal and maintenance facilities, and perhaps more indicative of economic promise, becoming a focal point for new products.
Grimes and his partners have become the North American distributor for Italy-based Tecnam Aircraft to sell its increasingly broad line of light aircraft products into the US market. With 45 employees, HOVA is now generating around $100,000 a month in revenue, mostly at Hanover County, but also at a smaller operation at Chesterfield airport in southern Virginia. Grimes says maintenance work has buoyed the business through the downturn, although flight instruction is picking up.
For Foster and his company, Skytech, which operated for 34 years at the state-run Martin State airport in Maryland, the chance to relocate his sales and maintenance operation to an outlying airport with growth potential was worth the risk of investing.
Foster in 2006 won a contract to take over from county operations at Carroll County airport, a satellite airfield 1h's drive north of the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
Equipped with a 1,554m runway, long enough for a large variety of business jets, the airport was convenient for visitors to reach business hubs, but far enough away so as to not be shut down during the many security events that restrict critical airspace over Washington DC.
"When we started, there were a couple of old pickup truck seats in the FBO, with One Life to Live on the TV in the corner," says Foster. "It was a classic old airport."
Skytech to date has invested $1.7 million in the restoration of the terminal, maintenance and sales facilities, three times the amount Foster originally thought it would require. Once the operations were up and running, each with its own 930m2 (10,000ft 2) hangar, Skytech decided to start an FBO to "control the customer experience", says Foster.
Revenue today is split roughly 80/20, with $9 million a year in maintenance work and $60 million a year in sales, and more corporate clients are coming in. "Fractional operators have discovered us," says Foster.
Skytech also has an FBO and maintenance operation in Rock Hill, South Carolina, serving the Charlotte area.
With new products on tap from all three of its airframers, some of which have not yet been announced, plus the county planning to build a new 1,950m runway at Carroll County, the future for Foster is quite green.
"There's a bounce coming," he says. "We want to bounce higher than anyone else."
Source: Flight International
