Just a year after its heralded opening, Richmond Executive Aviation (REA), one of two FBOs at Virginia’s Richmond Executive-Chesterfield County Airport (KFCI), had its 30-year lease terminated by the county authority due to multiple defaults of the airport’s contracted minimum standards. In a letter sent to REA’s leadership, airport manager Jeremy Wilkinson detailed the violations including not employing a sufficient number of FAA-certified aircraft mechanics and flight instructors, running out of fuel, unsafe fueling practices, and not having an airworthy multi-engine aircraft available for flight training.
A county spokesperson told AIN that REA was required to satisfy minimum standards of operation applicable to all FBOs in business at the airport. Despite being given multiple opportunities and ample time to achieve compliance, it had defaulted on many of those minimum standards and other terms of the agreement.
“As a result, Chesterfield was well within its contractual rights to terminate the company’s FBO agreement and revoke its access to county-owned facilities at the airport effective immediately,” the spokesman said, adding the company is still sorting out legal and financial matters between its ownership in the aftermath of the FBO's closure. As that plays out, the county spokesman told AIN that it is still too early to discuss whether the facility will be put through the request-for-proposals process to attract a new FBO operator.
In the meantime, Chesterfield County will continue to work with the owner of the two 10,000-sq-ft hangars, which is a separate entity from the FBO, to help position them for other aeronautical uses such as storage of aircraft.
The move leaves Dominion Aviation Services as the lone FBO on the field.
