When you build it how do you get them to come???

benyflyguy

benyflyguy

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benyflyguy
I am based out of KHZL. City owned, It is a ‘medium’ sized airport 5k runway uncontrolled. We are in Northeast Pennsylvania. We have been having an uptick lately in small business jet traffic citations, nextant jets, some G3 and G4’s. they come here because it’s cheap to stay here and cheap to fuel here. Compared to TEB/HPN/BED
foe past 6 months we have been talking about putting up a big hanger. The one charter company we met is looking for a home in Mid Atlantic area and has given us some soft commitment to 10 yr lease to base a plane or two here -willing to sign.
We, me and two partners, are looking to build a 16,000 sqft hangar. The city has been very agreeable and is business friendly. We have already have a consultant that is doing like 15 hangars in PA now of this size. We have talked to other hangar owners in similar area near hubs and they say build it and they will come. our consultant says build it and they will come. While I agree in principal- the rub is making a 2.5mil+ investment without some good commitments is scary.
my question is what is a good way to get it out there that we are building hangar space. Everyone you talk to will tell you it’s at a premium. To us-its a good time to take on some debt-money is cheap right now and banks want to give our loans bad. Hangar space is at a premium at the bigger fields nearby and costs are much higher nearby.
hangar details:
16000 sqft
Heated
Part 145 repair station status (goal)
On field overnight crew sleeping quarters

Pros
Cheap fuel, deice
Cheaper to stay at hzl

Cons:
5000 ft runway so bigger jets can’t pull full fuel out of here.
 
I want to ask all kinds of questions to learn more about your venture but must admit I dont know who you spread the word with. You need Jets and Turbo props. May sound dumb but could you watch flightaware data, pull LLC info and send them a mailer and/or call if they have a phone number. Focus on planes that depart/arrive at the bigger more expensive airports nearby. Best I got.
 
I looked a where KHZL is on a sectional. How long a drive is it to New York City or Philadelphia? Seems as if you are too far away to be a substitute for KTEB or KHPN. You might ask the current transients where their passengers are going from your airport, or why they chose it. I found that for small town airports, the key was to have some attraction, either business or recreational, nearby. But that's not something an airport can control.
 
Sinistar said:
I want to ask all kinds of questions to learn more about your venture but must admit I dont know who you spread the word with. You need Jets and Turbo props. May sound dumb but could you watch flightaware data, pull LLC info and send them a mailer and/or call if they have a phone number. Focus on planes that depart/arrive at the bigger more expensive airports nearby. Best I got.
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Ask away. It helps the process of figuring everything out for me too! Fortunately they have consultant/engineering groups that handle a lot of the background into.
I like that idea of cold calling traffic I see on FlightAware flying over to other regionals.

Everskyward said:
I looked a where KHZL is on a sectional. How long a drive is it to New York City or Philadelphia? Seems as if you are too far away to be a substitute for KTEB or KHPN. You might ask the current transients where their passengers are going from your airport, or why they chose it. I found that for small town airports, the key was to have some attraction, either business or recreational, nearby. But that's not something an airport can control.
Click to expand...

So what currently is happening is we have a regular transient that he stays here and fuels here knowing he is going to have a lift out of KTEB or HPN. They calculate the cost saving of staying here into the “cycles” on the jet and it works of for most part to stay and fuel here. It really is quite a numbers game.the money is in the long term hangar lease. Not the overnight stuff but that is bonus.
 
My uncontrolled home airport has a 5k' runway and the lowest fuel prices in the greater metropolitan area. There is already two large 20k' hangars on the field. They recently put in a larger 40,000 sqft heated jet hangar. It was full within a few months. Lots of Citations, Gulfstreams, and even a Dassault Falcon. It seems a lot of the private jet owners moved from the Class C and Class D airports nearby because the hangar space and fuel was cheaper at my home field.
 
There is a company on my field that has built 3 huge hangars and all were to capacity within months. He has built a very profitable operation. He specialized in Cirrus aircraft at first but now houses several Pilatus and citation aircraft offering aircraft management and repair. He would do well to start his own FBO that specializes in jet services to compete with the local one that is terrible. Doubt that will be approved though since the county owns the current one.
 
Here's the flow, or at least what happened here.
Idea: We can make huge money luring in jets and other commercial traffic!
Funding: We cant afford to do this ourselves. Let's ask for government money.
Local Government: Great idea! We just want a little say in the operation.
Spending: Enthusiastic spending.
OOPS: Spent too much. Way too much.
Commercial interests: Wowser! Cheap fuel, great hangers! We are in!
Back patting: Everyone is a hero! Parades, service start-ups, customers.
Local Government: People are complaining about the noise. Noise rules, cut back on hours of operation, cut back on services.

Less than 10 years latter, all the big operators have pulled out.
Because of declining revenues, the local government is constantly hike fees, driving most of the small shops out of business.
We are left with a towered field that does less than half the daily ops of the private field 10 miles away.
Oh, and a big debt, which we, the people are forced to pay down, with an increase in local taxes. Yaaay!
 
imwithtuxedo said:
My uncontrolled home airport has a 5k' runway and the lowest fuel prices in the greater metropolitan area. There is already two large 20k' hangars on the field. They recently put in a larger 40,000 sqft heated jet hangar. It was full within a few months. Lots of Citations, Gulfstreams, and even a Dassault Falcon. It seems a lot of the private jet owners moved from the Class C and Class D airports nearby because the hangar space and fuel was cheaper at my home field.
Click to expand...

I know exactly the airport you mean and yes, it is impressive how much jet business it has pulled in in the last few years. Definitely "build it and they will come". Jets and turboprops plan it as a refueling stop too, of course being in the middle of the country helps a lot with that.
 
Shepherd said:
Here's the flow, or at least what happened here.
Idea: We can make huge money luring in jets and other commercial traffic!
Funding: We cant afford to do this ourselves. Let's ask for government money.
Local Government: Great idea! We just want a little say in the operation.
Spending: Enthusiastic spending.
OOPS: Spent too much. Way too much.
Commercial interests: Wowser! Cheap fuel, great hangers! We are in!
Back patting: Everyone is a hero! Parades, service start-ups, customers.
Local Government: People are complaining about the noise. Noise rules, cut back on hours of operation, cut back on services.

Less than 10 years latter, all the big operators have pulled out.
Because of declining revenues, the local government is constantly hike fees, driving most of the small shops out of business.
We are left with a towered field that does less than half the daily ops of the private field 10 miles away.
Oh, and a big debt, which we, the people are forced to pay down, with an increase in local taxes. Yaaay!
Click to expand...

this is so true. My airport used to be in the center of town. When the board started pitching for a new one they quoted increased revenue from jet traffic. Built the new airport and no jets came and the new excuse was the taxiway wasn’t wide or strong enough. So they built a new airport for jet traffic and didn’t make the taxiway big enough. Next excuse was the runway needed a higher capacity. After doing that we started getting some jet traffic but no where near what was pitched to the county. Now the problem is the Ramp isn’t big enough for more than 2-3 jets at a time maybe less depending on the size.

a lot of the early new comers left during the recession leaving 4 massive hangars empty. In comes the forestry service to fill them up. Now they have marked off the entire ramp in from of their hangar as forestry service use only cutting the transient ramp space in half.

I swear you can’t make this stuff up!
 
Forgot One! So the FBO was very nice and still fairly new. It was on the small side but perfectly serviceable for 99% of the time. The few times the lobby did fill up from jet passengers they started pitching for a new FBO. So up goes the new FBO that is now 2 stories and 5 times the size of the old one but guess what?? They lobby area is only 25% larger because they gave cosmetic design precedence over usability and ran the stair case right down the middle of the lobby. But there are At least 4 times the number of empty offices and half the upstairs is unfinished because they ran out of money. But at least now they have a board room large enough for the twice a quarter board meeting without having to bring in extra chairs.
 
benyflyguy said:
So what currently is happening is we have a regular transient that he stays here and fuels here knowing he is going to have a lift out of KTEB or HPN. They calculate the cost saving of staying here into the “cycles” on the jet and it works of for most part to stay and fuel here. It really is quite a numbers game.the money is in the long term hangar lease. Not the overnight stuff but that is bonus.
Click to expand...
I agree that if they are going to base the airplane somewhere to wait for flights out of KTEB or KHPN, that it might be less expensive at your airport. I flew corporate and charter in jets, but I was not a bean counter, so I don't have much insight on the money savings. I know that, as a pilot, it was more of a PITA to reposition, than to start the flight at the place where the passengers were located. We were based in Denver, but we frequently repositioned to the Colorado ski country airports to pick up or drop off passengers.
 
benyflyguy said:
Ask away. It helps the process of figuring everything out for me too! Fortunately they have consultant/engineering groups that handle a lot of the background into.
Click to expand...
So basically, how will you make money...leasing out hangar space and providing services like standard FBO's? That makes me curious how much staff you need (rampers?, front desk?, etc)

Not sure if I see this right but doesn't look like it has a ILS? If not is this something that would prevent someone from basing there now that everything has RNAV approaches.

Where I trained, they are building more of these monster hangars and the entrances are relatively private. So no clue what is in them but look about as big as you described. The longest runway is 5000x100 so very much like yours. I have seen just about everything in there. Citation X, Gulfstreams, Falcons and even a GlobaExpress one day...but he left kinda late one summer evening and maybe it was empty for all I know.

Will you be competing with the Municipal for fuel sales?

Thankfully most of the city is to the south and not all under the app/dep ends.
 
One con I didn't see you list is the current economic climate.

If we can rebound quickly, say 12-18 months, great! As long as you can financially weather the storm.

If this recession/depression whatever it is lasts longer, or gets worse, can you stand to have little to no income for more than 18 months? Aviation is the first to suffer and last to recover in economic turns.

Its also one thing to have transient traffic, versus based aircraft. A G5 coming in everyday, but not needing hangar or services, doesn't do your business any good. Unless you community has something that is a major draw for the folks in the back of those airplanes, the occasional transient isn't enough to build a business off of. Where we have had hangars built here was because we had more and more based aircraft and a need to house them. Yeah there is a little extra space for transients, but you can't build a business on maybes.
 
midwestpa24 said:
One con I didn't see you list is the current economic climate.

If we can rebound quickly, say 12-18 months, great! As long as you can financially weather the storm.

If this recession/depression whatever it is lasts longer, or gets worse, can you stand to have little to no income for more than 18 months? Aviation is the first to suffer and last to recover in economic turns.

Its also one thing to have transient traffic, versus based aircraft. A G5 coming in everyday, but not needing hangar or services, doesn't do your business any good. Unless you community has something that is a major draw for the folks in the back of those airplanes, the occasional transient isn't enough to build a business off of. Where we have had hangars built here was because we had more and more based aircraft and a need to house them. Yeah there is a little extra space for transients, but you can't build a business on maybes.
Click to expand...
They could advertise such: You can smell the Centralia Coal Fire from here!
 
If you offer free cookies, ice cream and popcorn, they will come.
 
midwestpa24 said:
One con I didn't see you list is the current economic climate.

If we can rebound quickly, say 12-18 months, great! As long as you can financially weather the storm.

If this recession/depression whatever it is lasts longer, or gets worse, can you stand to have little to no income for more than 18 months? Aviation is the first to suffer and last to recover in economic turns.

Its also one thing to have transient traffic, versus based aircraft. A G5 coming in everyday, but not needing hangar or services, doesn't do your business any good. Unless you community has something that is a major draw for the folks in the back of those airplanes, the occasional transient isn't enough to build a business off of. Where we have had hangars built here was because we had more and more based aircraft and a need to house them. Yeah there is a little extra space for transients, but you can't build a business on maybes.
Click to expand...

That’s a good point. The goal isn’t to cater to transients. But long term tenants. The transients are bonus when long term guys are out flying around. Certainly you could not even come close to making money on transient traffic at our airport for the cost to build new. As far as weathering the storm- that is the risk but these don’t go up in a week. I’d you structure your loan and land lease agreements correctly in your favor you can attempt to minimize risk. It is surprising how much work some of these charters are still doing however!but I do agree it is a bit hard to stomach the concept of taking on some risk. we were planning this before all this covid crap. But developing right now has its advantages as well. We are still working out the balancing act. A lot of things need to line up before we really throttle up!

Bell206 said:
Define this part more. Is your true goal to park aircraft or work on aircraft?
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well that was one of the things on the “wish list” of probable long term tenant. They want to be able to work on their own aircraft with their mechanics there -it is one of the reasons we are going with a bit bigger hangar (16k vs12)with fire supression(that’s hit is expensive).
 
benyflyguy said:
They want to be able to work on their own aircraft with their mechanics there
Click to expand...
Key words. Part 145 has zero to do with this situation. The only thing preventing a person from working on their own aircraft in a hangar they do not own is local rules, i.e., airport/county rules, or what your insurance company allows. Same for fire suppression as that is not a Part 145 requirement but a local fire code need. So unless there is more to your plan, I don't see any need to keep Part 145 on your wish list as it would require a completely different business plan than you have stated.
 
Bell206 said:
Key words. Part 145 has zero to do with this situation. The only thing preventing a person from working on their own aircraft in a hangar they do not own is local rules, i.e., airport/county rules, or what your insurance company allows. Same for fire suppression as that is not a Part 145 requirement but a local fire code need. So unless there is more to your plan, I don't see any need to keep Part 145 on your wish list as it would require a completely different business plan than you have stated.
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That is interesting to know. I am under impression that If the tenant wanted to work on their aircraft for mx they (not me) would need to get a 145 op certificate. I don’t think we need to do anything for that. We (hangar owners) have no intention of running a repair station.
As for fire suppression anything over 12k sqft needs fire suppression in our area.
 
benyflyguy said:
I am under impression that If the tenant wanted to work on their aircraft for mx they (not me) would need to get a 145 op certificate.
Click to expand...
Not at all. If that were true then everyone who rented a hangar anywhere would need one too if they worked on their aircraft. In very general terms, a Part 145 Repair Station is the next level up on the maintenance food chain from an AP/IA and are allowed to perform maintenance functions up to and including those allowed by aircraft OEMs.
 
Shepherd said:
Here's the flow, or at least what happened here.
Idea: We can make huge money luring in jets and other commercial traffic!
Funding: We cant afford to do this ourselves. Let's ask for government money.
Local Government: Great idea! We just want a little say in the operation.
Spending: Enthusiastic spending.
OOPS: Spent too much. Way too much.
Commercial interests: Wowser! Cheap fuel, great hangers! We are in!
Back patting: Everyone is a hero! Parades, service start-ups, customers.
Local Government: People are complaining about the noise. Noise rules, cut back on hours of operation, cut back on services.

Less than 10 years latter, all the big operators have pulled out.
Because of declining revenues, the local government is constantly hike fees, driving most of the small shops out of business.
We are left with a towered field that does less than half the daily ops of the private field 10 miles away.
Oh, and a big debt, which we, the people are forced to pay down, with an increase in local taxes. Yaaay!
Click to expand...

LOL. The road to hell... :)
 
Do you need to build a $2.5 mil 16K sq ft hangar or could you build a smaller one first and expand as needed?
 
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