The Lynchburg Regional Airport Commission unanimously voted to recommend a one-year lease agreement renewal with the airport’s sole fixed-based operator during a special meeting Monday.
Aviation Resources Inc., which is owned by a Liberty University subsidiary, has provided aeronautic services such as fueling and aircraft maintenance at the airport since September 2015, when Lynchburg City Council authorized a three-year lease with the operator.
While that authorization included a five-year renewal option, commissioners decided Monday to recommend a one-year renewal while also favoring a provision to submit a request for proposals for other potential FBOs in addition to Aviation Resources.
Aviation Resources was created in 2014 when Freedom Aviation LLC purchased Virginia Aviation. Previously, Freedom Aviation and Virginia Aviation operated as separate FBOs at the airport. Freedom Aviation is a subsidiary of Liberty University.
Airport Manager Mark Courtney said the three-year lease was meant to serve as a “trial period” to determine how the airport functioned with a single FBO. This is why lease terms also required Aviation Resources to provide a customer satisfaction survey and audited financial statements, he said.
However, the company did not provide a recent customer survey, and the financial statements supplied to commissioners in April were not satisfactory, according to Courtney. The last customer satisfaction survey provided to the commissioners was in 2016.
Freedom Aviation President and Director of Operations Andrew Wallace said during Monday’s meeting the company was not comfortable providing detailed financial statements because of concerns about potential competitors viewing the information.
Courtney met with Chairman Bert Dodson, Vice Chairman Bob Day and Lynchburg City Attorney Walter Erwin last week to determine the current issues at the airport and options for the lease renewal.
Day presented three options for lease renewal recommendations to his fellow commissioners in Monday’s meeting. The first, he said, would grant the five-year renewal option. In the second, the commission could vote to deny the renewal completely and submit a request for proposals for other potential FBOs.
Lastly, the commission could recommend renewal of the lease for less than five years, which still would provide stability at the airport but also offers the option to entertain potential offers from other FBOs.
The airport had 92,000 total operations in 2017, Courtney said. Of those, 5,500 were commercial flights and 85,000 were general aviation flights. The majority of general aviation flights came from Liberty’s School of Aeronautics.
Day asked his fellow commissioners to consider what they would like to see at the airport — stability and activity, growth and competition, or competition at a measured pace — in five years when making their decision.
During a wide-ranging discussion, commissioners discussed the positives of inviting bids for additional FBOs at the airport.
“Competition should be good for everybody. It makes us better. It makes us more competitive, and it makes us look good, I think, in the eyes of people who might want to come here,” commissioner Jones Stanley said.
This was the consensus of the airport commission.
“We’ve got a public asset here. We’ve got an obligation to the general aviation public to look into all services that are provided to that public and that they are provided in a competitive way. There may be no answer other than the way it is, but we don’t know that answer, commissioner,” commissioner Charles Nowlin said to his fellow commissioners.
The Lynchburg Regional Airport Commission’s recommendation now goes before Lynchburg City Council, which has final say on the renewal.
As part of the original lease term, which expires June 30, Aviation Resources pays the city $16,988 monthly to rent certain facilities at the airport.
Details of the lease renewal, including the monthly lease payment, will be finalized in upcoming discussions, Courtney explained. The airport typically has a 2.5 percent annual escalation clause in its facility leases, he said, but the escalation number for the Aviation Resources renewal has not been set.
He said airport staff will request to discuss the recommendation at the May 22 Lynchburg City Council work session.