Thirty years ago, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was the sleepy undeveloped South Florida of novelist John D. MacDonald’s trouble-attracting protagonist Travis McGee. At spring-break time, the city would erupt with partying young people, but during the rest of the year it was business as usual, a South Florida far removed from today’s frenetic, beach-front high-rise metropolis.
At Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, this meant that the aviation business was predominantly piston-powered, and in 1979 Don Campion and John Price opened a small maintenance shop and aircraft sales operation called Banyan Air Service. The company’s main focus was maintaining piston singles and twins operated by local charter companies, and the timing for opening a business at the airport couldn’t have been better. Since then, the airport has benefited from Fort Lauderdale’s rapid growth to becoming the yachting capital of the U.S., attracting a steady clientele of jet-operating business owners and vacationers as well as a growing customer base from Latin America.
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