FBO Profile: Cleveland Jet Center

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.

Ready for RNC Convention

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.