Mid-Point 2012 FBO Gut Check … It’s Wheels-Up for Remainder of Year

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By John L. Enticknap

“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” - Calvin Coolidge

We’re halfway through 2012, so let’s do a gut check to see how the FBO industry faired for the first six months of the year. Then, let’s take a look at what we can do to help our bottom line for the remainder of the year.



At the beginning of 2012, we wrote three blog posts that I encourage you to review.

Part 1: 2012 Business Outlook for FBOs

Part 2: Decreasing FBO Costs in 2012

Part 3: Improving FBO Productivity in 2012

To summarize our 2012 FBO economic forecast, in January we said if your FBO has a five percent growth for 2012, your firm will be a star! That is still very true. We thought for a while that the growth rate may be greater in the first quarter of the year, but growth was a meager 1.9 percent. There was a slight up-tick for the second quarter that may push us past 2 percent. However, our overall prediction for the year of a 2.2 percent growth rate will most likely be the norm.

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Decreasing FBO Costs in 2012

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Cash Flow and Controlling Expenses—Managing Your Business
(Part 2 of a 3-Part Series: Planning a Successful 2012 FBO Business Strategy)

By John L. Enticknap, Aviation Business Strategies Group

 The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
                                                                —Rupert Murdoch 

In the first installment of this series, we discussed our FBO Business Outlook for 2012. At the recent NBAA Schedulers & Dispatchers Conference held in San Diego, we had a chance to discuss this outlook and the current business climate with a number of FBOs in attendance.

Many we talked to agreed with our forecast of a slow uptick of around 2.5 percent average industry growth in 2012, with some individual FBOs experiencing up to 5 percent growth or even possibly more.  We met a number of FBO owners and managers who indicated they were ahead of the 2.5 percent growth rate for 2011 and expect to do better than the 5 percent growth projection for 2012.  And of course, some indicated 2011 was a flat year and they didn’t expect to do much better for 2012.

For this installment, part two of our three-part series, we want to discuss ways FBOs can better manage and even decrease their costs in 2012.

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Planning a Successful 2012 FBO Business Strategy: A Three Part Series

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Part 1: Our FBO Business Outlook for 2012

By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson, Aviation Business Strategies Group

 Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.                                                                                                                                          —Mark Twain 

Recently we received a call from one of the major business aviation publications asking for our outlook for the FBO business in 2012. As writers, practitioners and consultants to the business aviation community, we are often contacted by the aviation trade press for our views on various industry subjects.

We have our ears and eyes glued to the FBO market, and recently completed one of our FBO Success Seminars for the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), so we have a pretty good pulse on the health of the industry.

Looking into the FBO Crystal Ball for 2012

First of all, in today’s political environment—especially with an election year upon us—it’s hard to get a good read on what’s going to happen in 2012 on a national level that will affect our FBO industry either positively or negatively. If you’ve watched any of the debates, you probably think ‘ol Mark Twain hit the nail on the head. You might as well wet your finger and hold it up in the air to see which way the economic wind is going to blow.

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Not All Customers are Created Equal

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Or, Sometimes You’ve Got to Tell Them How the Cow Ate the Cabbage!

 By Ron Jackson

 Recently we completed our fall NATA FBO Success Seminar in Atlanta and we had a great turnout of FBO attendees representing locations from as close as the Atlanta area to as far away as Grand Rapids, Michigan, and points in between. We were fortunate to have as one of our sponsors AC-U-KWIK, and Jodi Espinoza made a very informative presentation.

One of our discussion topics at the FBO Success Seminar is how to work with customers who want everything but are not willing to pay for anything. Sound familiar?

The old adage “The Customer is Always Right” is usually true. However, every once in a while you run across customers who break this general customer service axiom. They seem to know everything, want everything, and want it now. Unfortunately, these customers usually don’t purchase a lot fuel, if any. Yet we manage to spend an exorbitant amount of time, resources and energy trying to make them happy.

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