Following last year’s decision to build its own $4 million, 12,000-sq-ft FBO at Fort Wayne (Ind.) International Airport (FWA), the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority has decided that it will manage the facility as well. Atlantic Aviation had operated as the lone FBO at the Indiana airport since 1988. Its current facility is slated to be removed when the company’s lease expires in January, before a planned expansion of the airline terminal. The service provider offered to build its own multimillion-dollar replacement facility, but that was declined.

“We did evaluate the typical lease environment where you have to write an RFP, let somebody bid on it and you pick the most advantageous person, and we also evaluated having a company come in and perform services on behalf of the airport in a contract management environment,” airport manager Scott Hinderman told AIN, adding the airport board thought that the “proprietary exclusive” idea was the most advantageous way for the airport authority to perform FBO services at FWA. “Atlantic has been here for a long time, and it has done the community very well,” he noted. “It’s just that at the end of the term of the lease, we’re going in a different direction.”

Atlantic currently leases its fuel farm, which will revert back to the airport and serve the new FBO, which is anticipated to be operational when Atlantic’s lease expires. Staffing for the new facility is expected to begin this summer to take account of training requirements. While the airport authority has managed the FBO at smaller Smith Field since 2008, Hinderman acknowledged that it is nowhere near the scope of operations at FWA.