Space Coast Executive Jet Center (SCEJC) is the prototypical mom-and-pop FBO, according to its owner, Carsten Petersen, who purchased the facility in 2021 with his wife, Wendy. One of two service providers at Florida’s Space Coast Regional Airport (KTIX), the company has occupied the same 1,500-sq-ft terminal since the late 1970s and has a staff of six full-time employees.
“Titusville has been a sleepy little city for years, but it is growing now,” said Petersen. “There are about 6,000 housing units being built, and big companies are buying land.”
Part of that boom is due to the growing commercial space industry. “We have seen an influx of space companies coming in,” Petersen told AIN. “We’ve got SpaceX here, we’ve got Blue Origin, Lockheed, Boeing, so because of that, investors are starting to show interest in this area.”
Despite its small size, the terminal includes all the amenities expected from a larger facility: passenger and crew lounges, a 15-seat a/v-equipped conference room, showers, a concierge, and even a refreshment bar with coffee and a five-tap soda dispenser. The Titan-branded facility, which claims the majority of business on the field, pumps approximately half a million gallons of fuel a year. It is normally open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. with after-hours callout available. The FBO also has a 12,000-sq-ft hangar capable of accommodating super-midsize business jets.
Early on in Petersen’s ownership tenure, the FBO hosted billionaire Jared Isaacman, ahead of his SpaceX flight as part of a charity endeavor that raised millions of dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman arranged to fly in some of the pediatric patients to view the launch and to greet the arriving flights. Petersen, his wife, and some of their neighbors donned inflatable costumes to meet them on the ramp. The idea stuck in Wendy’s mind and now—depending upon the daily mood at the FBO—flight crews might be met on the ramp by an exuberantly hopping tyrannosaurus. “There’s a lot of pilots that actually think this is funny,” explained a bemused Petersen. “I don’t know why you do it, I don’t see it's funny, but they do like it.”
The FBO, which is at the commercial airport closest to Kennedy Space Center, handles aircraft as large as the Air Force C-17 transports that deliver fully assembled satellites scheduled for launch. It also provided Petersen with one of his more interesting moments when he was called out one night for an emergency arrival, which turned out to be an aircraft with a cargo of live baby squid, part of a physiology experiment destined for the international space station. Something had gone wrong with the previous batch, so the replacements were quickly whisked over to the launching pad and loaded aboard their rocket ride. According to Petersen, business is steady all year round, but he noted that his 220,000-sq-ft, fully lit ramp is crowded when historic rocket launches occur.
The growth of the area and the rise of the commercial space arena has Petersen thinking. “We all of a sudden realized that we may get very busy, so we need to expand and we need to start doing it fast,” said Petersen. “We are trying to hire some smart people to come up with maybe a new concept for an FBO. Maybe it will become a space welcome center or something like that.” Designs are being drawn up for a multimillion-dollar 5,000-sq-ft facility, and to support that, Petersen said, several investors are looking to secure office space in the future building. In addition, a private developer is about to break ground on two hangars, one of 75,000 sq ft capable of holding a BBJ-class aircraft and another between 25,000 and 50,000 sq ft, both of which will be managed by SCEJC. While the expectation is to open this FBO in Q4 2024, Peterson acknowledged that despite the permitting process already underway, he is behind schedule for that timeline.