Aviation Services
Beyond the FBO: charter operators, flight schools, and MROs.
We advise owners of charter operations, flight schools and maintenance businesses on sale, acquisition and valuation.
The economics differ: fleet, certificate, labour and hangar. The discipline is the same: establish value, then defend it.
Three businesses that look adjacent and price nothing alike.
An FBO is a real estate business with a fuel operation attached. A charter certificate, a flight school and a maintenance operation are each something else — and a buyer who underwrites all four the same way will get three of them wrong.
Charter operators
Value concentrates in the certificate, the fleet and the contracted flight hours behind it. Owned versus managed aircraft, the durability of the customer base and the depth of the pilot roster move price more than last year’s revenue does.
Flight schools
Enrollment pipeline, instructor retention, fleet age and utilization, financing partners and any Part 141 or university relationship. A school with a waiting list and no instructors is not the business its revenue suggests.
Maintenance and MRO
Repair station ratings, capability list, labour supply, hangar square footage and the mix between contracted and walk-in work. Skilled labour, not demand, is usually the binding constraint.
Combined operations
Most owners hold more than one of these, often inside a single entity with shared hangar, shared staff and shared overhead. Separating them is the first step toward knowing what any of them is worth.
What drives value
The four things that behave differently than they do at an FBO.
The discipline is the same as any transaction we run. The inputs are not.
Certificate
An air carrier certificate, a repair station rating or a Part 141 approval is an asset with real transfer risk. How it survives a change of control determines whether a buyer is acquiring a business or a set of aircraft.
Fleet
Owned, leased or managed changes the balance sheet, the earnings quality and the buyer universe. Aircraft age, maintenance status and lease terms are diligence items long before they are valuation items.
Labour
Pilots, instructors and A&P mechanics are the scarce input across all three businesses. Wage trend, retention and the depth of the bench are underwritten directly, not treated as an expense line.
Hangar
Square footage, door height and the lease behind it. Where the operation sits on leased airport land, remaining term and assignment rights carry the same weight they do in an FBO transaction.
Earnings quality
Owner compensation, related-party aircraft, related-party rent and training revenue recognized ahead of delivery. The adjustments are different from an FBO’s but the work is the same.
Customer concentration
A charter operation with one corporate account, or a school with one university contract, is priced as a single-customer business no matter what the top line says.
Establish value, then defend it.
We advise owners on sale and acquisition of charter operations, flight schools and maintenance businesses, and provide valuations where an owner, a partner or a lender needs a defensible view of what the operation is worth.
Processes run the same way as our FBO work: value established independently first, then a confidential approach to a qualified group of buyers, with senior principals involved from analysis through close.
Where the business sits alongside an FBO — which it frequently does — the two are valued and marketed together or separately depending on which produces the better outcome. That is a decision made on evidence, not on convenience.
The firm
Senior principals, involved throughout.
Griffin Towers is an independent advisory firm focused on aviation transactions and select strategic assignments.
The practice is intentionally focused. Engagements are led directly by senior principals from initial analysis and valuation through negotiation, diligence and execution.
We favor preparation, discretion and disciplined judgment over transaction volume.
A private overview of the firm, representative experience and selected capabilities is available upon request.
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If you are considering a sale, acquisition, valuation or strategic aviation assignment, tell us what you are working through.
Initial conversations are confidential and handled directly by the firm.
Boulder, Colorado 80304