By Aviator
Ports Services Ltd. Antigua’s smallest and local Ground Handling Operator was exiled to the abandoned U.S. Base Runway 10, because the small jets they handled were causing too much congestion on the parking ramp of the Main Terminal area.
At that time RWY10 land was covered with wild tamarind trees and left-over rubble of the base, accommodating an abandoned hangar, and two small hangars of the other local aviation entrepreneur Carib Aviation. This was the same man who started LIAT on the island of Montserrat, without a real runway, and later in life Carib Aviation in Barbuda on a grass strip.
Courage and integrity can create wonders, and the world of aviation gives back much in return for hard work and vision.
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Women in Aviation are a rarity, and in small countries especially, so when the female owned Ports Services Ltd. was pushed into the dark wilderness of Runway 10, even the Tower and the Air Traffic Controllers created sympathetic humor to the situation by referring to the Operator, on crossing the Active runway, as Arafat exiled to Ramallah.
The FBO building was a ‘small house’ which opened before the area was fully cleared and clean as it is today. It dared to call itself a Fixed Base Operation and proceeded to offer services to the wealthy, the famous and the royals visiting Antigua(Mill Reef Club), Jumby Bay Coco Point, K Club and private home owners. It was the year 2000 and in sync with the new millennium the name was FBO 2000 Antigua Ltd.
The business took off and soon attracted the attention of the current ‘big money man’ R. Allen Stanford who seemed to have had a ‘plan for the land.’ Located on a peninsula RWY 10 provided a unique area of the airport which offered privacy, and which later on became the most important ingredient in Stanford’s global business plan for laundering money. With that in mind a program to expel the local operator from the potential gold mine was instituted, with the assistance of the then Government, and continued with successive Administrations.
As the FBO took off, attracting private services for the wealthiest people in the world, flying their jets into Antigua to join their villas and yachts and to various islands in the region, FBO 2000 incorporated the European approach where everything is done for the client in and around the aircraft, thereby maintaining their privacy and security, disembarking directly into their vehicle, and out of the airport.
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Enter Stanford, beloved by the PM and his Ministers, and promises to build the most luxurious and lucrative private FBO with mega hangars and high level aviation amenities which threatened removal of the small buildings of the local operator. However the efficiency and dedication of the owner, expanded her business enough to fund the fight to stay on location, as the territorial fight moved up the Courts to the Privy Council in the UK. Fighting and operating a sophisticated business in the same location is usually a recipe for disaster, but she managed to choreograph dance steps to success, without many of the clients even knowing there was an issue on the location.
Winning at the Privy Council and the ultimate demise of the Stanford companies, and their owner in a U.S. jail, did little to stem the attitude towards the local owner, as the under-the-table generosity of the Stanford days are remembered with longing to this very day.
In 2014 FBO 2000 sold its assets in 3 operations, Antigua, St. Kitts & Nevis to the world’s largest FBO operators, Signature, and continued their Ports Services Ground Operating company, and fuel.
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Within six months upon the sale, a settlement was attained with the Stanford liquidators, whereby the RWY10 lands sold to their client were transferred to the owners of FBO 2000 for damages endured, and the remaining lots on the airport were also sold to them.
The receiving company, Antigua Hangars Inc became the owner of 26.44 acres of land around the Dis-used Runway 10.
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The post Rising against the wind (Runway 10 — Part 1) appeared first on Antigua Breaking News.
