This year was the first year the National Football League's Superbowl championship game was played in the state of Indiana, and only the fourth time that it has been played in a cold-weather city. Concerns about how potential weather would affect aircraft traffic had the Indy Jet FBO working on deicing plans. Fortunately, weather for Superbowl weekend turned out beautifully, relates Indy Jet director of sales and marketing, Erin Lawson.
Located at the Indianapolis Regional Airport (KMQJ) just east of Indianapolis, Indy Jet experienced some 140 aircraft for the week and some 90-100 operations on Super Bowl Sunday alone. Quite a shift from a typical day, when the FBO supports some 10-20 aircraft on an uncontrolled field.
Says Lawson, "For us, it was all about how are we going to maximize our space? We utilized a temporary tower for the event ... so we had to get familiar with coorinating with the tower. Also, we didn't know who was coming in until a few weeks ahead of time, so there was some last minute scrambling."
Ultimately, the experience and the exposure the event brought were the greatest benefits for Indy Jet, says Lawson. She adds, "We’ve gotten a lot of return traffic since then and we’ve gotten a lot of compliments, which is huge to us with this being the first time that we’ve ever held an event like this; it’s probably the biggest event we’ll ever hold."
At Indianapolis International Airport (IND), the Million Air FBO saw some 430 aircraft and made a slight profit from the event, but the larger benefit was operating on the 'worldwide stage', as regional director Drent Sarault puts it. He comments, "Weather played into our hands — we had a 50-plus degree day and not a cloud in the sky.
"As far as us being on the national stage ... it gives us recognition. Everyone that’s coming in on the corporate jet side, most of them are business owners ... so they get to see the city, and the potential here.
"That’s what we want, more corporations bringing headquarters here, or plants, or whatever brings in jobs. In the long term, I think that is what’s going to benefit us individually, and the city in general."
Logistics; Staffing
On a typical day, Million Air operates on about 3 acres of concrete; the FBO acquired the space of an old terminal parking ramp to add to that space. Comments Sarault, "We had 105 airplanes parked on that ramp, and we actually had overflow on another area that ended up being completely full."
Million Air was the exclusive support provider for NetJets, who took over the FBO facility. Million Air set up a hangar to support the rest of the traffic complete with a VIP lounge for customers as they came in.
"So we kind of had a split operation in a lot of ways, which helped because due to the amount of people coming in, we never would have been able to handle them all at our FBO facility," explains
"I think Net Jets had 75 departures Sunday night — and on the other side, the non-NetJets flights, we had some 130 departures after the game. So you’re talking two pilots per plane, where do you put all these pilots when they’re standing around during the game waiting around for their people to show up?
"So we had a massive amount of people here during the game, and we brought in staff members from around the Million Air network to help out."
At a staff of 30, the FBO brought in about 65 additional employees. Adds Sarault, "Reservations got so high I had four of my family members here doing support in the VIP area — they were matching passengers with their pilots who were inside so we could get them on a bus and get them to their airplane.
"That push right after the game is nothing you can ever prepare for. I warned the staff, because I’ve worked several of them — I worked Houston and Detroit ... there’s no way to prepare someone for what they’re going to see that night. Or even Monday morning."
Over at Indianapolis Regional, Indy Jet was the first FBO outside of the temporary flight restriction (TFR) — a 10 mile radius around the stadium. Remarks :awson, "So we had a lot of the people that wanted to leave right after kick-off, or right after half-time, or immediately after the game — if they were at our airport, they were able to do so because we were the first airport outside of that ring."
In terms of aircraft type, Lawson says there was a mixture. "The one thing that we weren’t expecting was, we had to close one of our runways to park aircraft on," she relates. "We were planning to park a majority of the aircraft out there and we ended up getting bombarded with the Gulfstreams and the Challengers that filled up our ramp pretty quickly — and it would've been hard to park some of that on the runway. That was kind of unexpected."
The FBO's fuel provider, Shell, brought in extra staff, including quality control and administrative professionals. Indy Jet also recieved staffing relief from many volunteers who also help out during the Indianapolis Air Show.
Planning For Fuel
Indy Jet pumped some 45,000 gallons of jet fuel for the event. With regard to planning, "We based our fuel supply on what some of the FBOs pumped for last year's Superbowl, and talked to Shell about what they’ve noticed with Super Bowls in the past — we pretty much had fuel trucks on standby that we could use, and Shell also brought us extra trucks for that week."
At Million Air, Sarault says the FBO had ten fuel trucks running for the five-day stretch, and fuel provider Phillips brought four of them. The FBO pumped some 240,000 gallons of jet fuel.
Remarks Sarault, "We had our fuel delivery group on standby, and we did end up calling them.
"We tried to pre-plan fuel. Just like anything else, you don’t want to have an excess inventory sitting in your tank with the volatility of fuel.
"We ended up getting to a point where we were pumping fuel faster than we were taking it in."
Fees And Reservations
Million Air started getting its first reservations in May — typically the corporate sponsors that attend the event each year. The FBO collected fees as aircraft departed.
"We broke the fees down by aircraft size," says Sarault. "I think large aircraft were $250 and smaller were $125. Fees were waived if you took on a minimum of 400 gallons for a large aircraft, and 250 gallons for medium and smaller-sized aircraft."
Indy Jet also based its fee parameters on aircraft size as well as collected fees after the event.
