A Visit With Phil Botana

Phil Botana is a walking history of the FBO (fixed base operator) business since the 1970s. It's summed up in this quote: "Before I went to Portland (OR) [to manage Flightcraft], Signature had acquired every FBO that I had worked for." I met Botana in 1984. As the communications manager for the National Air Transportation Association outside Washington, I was introduced to Phil as the incoming chair of the association ? perhaps the youngest-ever chair. His FBO resume includes Burlington Northern Airmotive, Van Dusen Air, Butler Aviation, Signature Flight Support, Flightcraft, and today the Tampa International Jet Center at TPA. (For those who are relatively new to the FBO biz, via a series of acquisitions, the evolution more or less is, Burlington Northern became Van Dusen which became Page Avjet which became Signature. Only Flightcraft, which is owned by the Pape family in the Northwest, is not part of the evolutionary chain.) Of all his experiences, Botana calls Butler "the best job I ever had." He was teamed up with then-president Bill Boisture and EVP/CFO Jerry Schlesinger. They were tasked, following a change in ownership, with revitalizing the Butler FBO chain, which had at best a mixed reputation for service. One of their tasks included bringing the chain into the era of information technology. Recalls Botana, "There was a great feeling of accomplishment, from making something with a tarnished reputation in the marketplace begin to improve, and seeing the financial performance follow. It was fun working with a team of great people an see it all come together. "Butler was really behind the times as far as computer systems went; they had so many manual systems, it was unbelievable. Bill and Jerry, to their credit, decided to leapfrog ahead of the industry- to the tune of a $1 million plus investment. "The cash flow impact was phenomenal. We figured that it was taking us two to three weeks to turn around transactions- from the time we sold the fuel until the time we received payment. A couple of months after the system went online; we were getting our cash two days after the transaction took place. The fuel sales were something like $65-70 million a year then. You figure out what two weeks of interest is on that much money and it created the working capital for the company. "But the real bonus was the data we were able to mine: who was doing business with us and where, as well as where they weren't doing business with us." For more on Botana's newest endeavor, the start-up of the Tampa International Jet Center (www.tampajet.com), look for the upcoming NBAA Convention Issue of AIRPORT BUSINESS (November/December 2005). For more on the NBAA show visit www.nbaa.org. Send me your comments by filling out the form below. I look forward to hearing from you.