With September’s announcement that Signature Flight Support parent company BBA Aviation is buying Landmark Aviation from the Carlyle Group, the FBO landscape will change somewhat this year. The $2.065 billion deal, when and if consummated, will give Signature—which already has the world’s largest FBO network—nearly 200 locations worldwide. Some observers have pointed out that the deal won’t change the number of bases controlled by service provider chains (approximately 10 percent in the U.S., mainly at top-tier airports). What will change is the name on a number of facilities, and there is no denying that for those customers who maintain brand loyalty (not a very large percentage, according to responses from our annual FBO survey) Signature has greatly enhanced its coverage and in-network referral capability, both domestically and abroad.
There is overlap between Signature and Landmark at 12 airports, and it remains to be seen how regulators will address this. Given the recent penchant for FBO chains to double-up locations at some airports, the deal will take some massaging at locations such as Westchester County Airport, where four of the five FBOs are currently operated by either Signature or Landmark, or at Teterboro Airport, where Signature already has two of the six facilities operating there. Landmark was one of two FBOs at Scottsdale when it acquired its competitor as part of its Ross Aviation purchase, a blockbuster deal at the time that involved 19 FBOs. Landmark was forced to shed that location and subsequently sold it to Signature. Now Signature will likely find itself in the exact same situation at the exact same airport.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication 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 AIN sister publication 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 Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with 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.
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