A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in 2007, Curt came to&nbsp;the publication&nbsp;from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;sister publication&nbsp;Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s&nbsp; Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with&nbsp;Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

Senior Editor

Curt Epstein

While the opening of a new FBO at an airport is not uncommon, one airport having two service providers debut new facilities in the span of a few months certainly is, and that is the situation at California’s Hayward Executive Airport (HWD). APP Jet Center opened an upgraded facility at the San Franciso-area general aviation gateway on March 15.


The company had served as the lone service provider there since 2011, when it acquired the former Atlantic Aviation facility at the height of the global economic crisis. At that time, the FBO pumped approximately 800,000 gallons of fuel a year, a&nbsp;number that has grown as the economy has slowly recovered, and last year it sold more than double that amount. But APP now finds itself facing competition for that pool of fuel sales in the form of New Jersey-based aviation services provider Meridian, which <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2016-10-17/meridian-now-running-left-coast">opened its first base outside of its Teterboro Airport</a> headquarters at Hayward in October.


APP CEO Thom Harrow felt the pressure of competition. He told AIN&nbsp;that with such recent growth in fuel sales, he could not risk losing business to the lure of a shiny new facility. “It’s as much an insurance policy as anything else, because obviously we put airplanes in here and that gives us fuel [sales], and we look better to transients.”


The $6 million APP facility includes a newly&nbsp;built 3,000-sq-ft terminal with a pilots' lounge and snooze room, shower facilities, and all the standard amenities. Harrow wanted the facility to have something other than a corporate feel, so he&nbsp;brought in a local interior design firm and tasked it with making the terminal look like the residence of an executive from a nearby Silicon Valley tech firm.


To maintain that ambiance, the building also includes an isolated operations center for the line service staff, with separate exits to the ramp, its own kitchen and service facilities. “That’s a big deal because in the old space we didn’t have that,” noted Harrow of the former 1,750-sq-ft terminal. “You would have customers there and you would have a room with a ton of equipment and a bunch of guys walking through.” The company subdivided the former terminal and rented it to tenants.


Also newly constructed was a 20,000-sq-ft hangar, which can shelter ultra-long-range business jets. It was joined to an existing 12,000-sq-ft hangar, which was renovated as part of the project, making a single contiguous structure. In total, APP has 86,000 sq ft of aircraft shelter.


According to Harrow, despite having just added another major hangar, the location is 75 percent subscribed with based aircraft, mainly business jets. “My measure of whether to build another hangar is the extent to which the general manager complains about the lack of space,” he explained. “Then you feel like there’s impetus to build something else, and I’m astonished, but that’s beginning to happen already here.”


As for Meridian's recently opened facility, CEO Ken Forester said, “We had been looking for an opportunity to establish an operational base and have an FBO on the West Coast, specifically California, for quite a long time,” noting the family-owned company had begun looking at airports as far back as 2006. “We had a lot of charter-&nbsp;and owner-flying going out to the West Coast and felt it would be a logical step.” He told&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;that the economic downturn put those plans on hold, but by December&nbsp;2013 the company had settled on Hayward, and a plot of land on the south side of the airport that had been occupied for decades by a Air National Guard base, which closed around the turn of the century. “We felt we had a tremendous opportunity to develop that south side,” said Forester. “We committed to 15 acres and to building a new facility and phasing development as we filled the hangars and the space.”


The resulting development features a 6,300-sq-ft terminal and office building, with a passenger lobby offering a lounge, coffee bar, business center, conference room, pilots' lounge with recliners, a snooze room, pilot briefing room, shower and locker facilities, kitchen, onsite car rental and crew cars. The $10 million facility, which will also serve as a West Coast base for the company’s charter management fleet, has a 30,000-sq-ft hangar capable of sheltering the latest class of ultra-long-range business jets and 3.5 acres of ramp. Aircraft maintenance support is available as the location has a full-time licensed A&amp;P mechanic to service Meridian’s charter aircraft as well as transients.


<h2>Airport Advantages</h2>


A gateway to the state’s famed Silicon Valley technology enclave, Hayward has drawn some favorable comparisons to nearby San Jose International. “The rents are probably 50 percent higher [there], the fuel is probably a dollar more expensive and it’s enough of a price difference to be worth repositioning to San Jose, if that’s where the owner is,” said Harrow, who noted it’s only a 10-minute hop between the two airports and Moffett Field in Mountain View is an even shorter flight.


Another advantage, Forester added, is that Hayward, like Meridian's home base of Teterboro, is a dedicated private aviation airport, meaning no congestion or delays due to commercial operations. “When you are presenting that kind of both convenience and economic difference, some people are going to bite,” said Harrow, adding those advantages apparently resonated with the owner of a GV who recently relocated his twinjet from San Jose to APP’s new hangar.


Overall, traffic at HWD has rebounded steadily since the downturn, according to airport manager Douglas McNeeley, whose airport was the beneficiary of the more than $15 million in private development. “We’re pleased about the two multimillion-dollar facilities, and hopefully more to come in the way of hangar construction here,” he said. “We’re talking to a number of people who are interested in Hayward and see it as an opportunity to provide some additional corporate hangars.”


In 2010 HWD saw 87,122 operations, but by last year that number had risen to 108,680. To welcome the new FBOs, the airport last fall resurfaced its 5,700-foot-long main runway, the longest runway of any GA airport in the Bay&nbsp;Area. The $2 million project funded by FAA, state and city dollars was completed in three and a half days by crews working around the clock.


McNeeley described the airport’s location as central to San Jose, Silicon Valley and Oakland, and a reasonable distance from San Francisco itself. It currently has 427 based aircraft, including 65 turbine-powered. For the two FBOs, a major prize remains the clientele of Ascend Aviation, a privately&nbsp;built 100,000-sq-ft corporate hangar complex, which is home to 25 aircraft, mostly midsize to large-cabin jets. APP of late has been negotiating fueling contracts with many of the operators who occupy the cavernous facility.


As for whether he believes there is enough potential business to support two major FBOs, McNeeley looks to the rising tide of traffic. “That’s always a question, and here I think the answer is yes,” he told AIN. “For one thing, after being stagnant with the economic downturn over the last couple of years, APP's fuel business&nbsp;has increased dramatically, so we think that bodes well for the economy here in the Bay Area. I think we’re going to be breaking two million gallons of jet fuel before too long. We’re almost there now.”

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