When AIN visited Landmark Aviation’s San Diego International Airport FBO in July, the line service crew and general manager Charlie Ferraro were enjoying a respite from an influx of customers the day before. There were about 50 arrivals, mostly drop-offs of customers flying from Los Angeles to attend the hugely popular Comic-Con show at the San Diego Convention Center. The arrival of so many airplanes is always challenging for Landmark because the airport is jammed with airline operations and there isn’t a lot of room for business jet parking, but fortunately most of the Comic-Con customers didn’t need parking during the show.
Landmark San Diego is an unusual FBO. Given the constraints of the airport and the
difficulty of building new facilities, the FBO is located inside a hangar. Ten years ago when it was a Jimsair Aviation facility, the Bracamonte family, which opened the FBO in 1950, received approval to build a new FBO and tore down the old one.
Unfortunately, those plans ended up in the peculiar limbo that sometimes results when airport and local authorities can’t agree on development plans, and Jimsair had to compromise by building an FBO terminal inside one of its hangars. The new offices were completed in 2003 and take up roughly half the hangar. The other half is used to store customer airplanes. The FBO is elegant and comfortable, with plenty of customer and pilot lounge space, conference room, WSI weather, onsite rental cars, onsite catering and concierge services. A customer might not know that a hangar encloses the facility except for not seeing sunshine through the windows.
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