How to Value an FBO (Fixed-Base Operator) in 2026

FBOs are one of the most misunderstood assets in the aviation world. On the surface they look like glorified gas stations for airplanes. In reality, a well-run FBO at the right airport is a local monopoly with a 30-year ground lease, pricing power, and a buyer list that includes KKR, Blackstone, and GIP. I've watched single-location FBOs change hands for $40 million, and I've seen owners sell for $8 million who should have gotten $14 million because they ran the process wrong.

Here's how FBO valuation actually works in 2026, and where the money is hiding.

What You're Really Selling

An FBO isn't a fuel business. It's a bundle of four revenue streams sitting on top of a long-term ground lease with the airport sponsor. Understanding the mix is the first step to understanding value.

Fuel sales (Jet-A and 100LL) are the headline number but the lowest-margin line. FBOs typically earn $0.80-$1.50 per gallon in net margin on Jet-A after fuel cost, into-plane fees, and flowage payments to the airport. A site pumping 3 million gallons a year generates $3-4.5M in fuel gross profit.

Hangar rentals are the hidden gold mine. Heated hangar space at a Class B satellite airport rents for $25-$60 per square foot annually, and the marginal cost after build-out is almost zero. A 60,000 sq ft hangar complex at $40/sqft throws off $2.4M of near-pure EBITDA. Buyers pay up for hangar-heavy FBOs because the revenue is contracted, sticky, and doesn't move with fuel prices.

Ramp fees, handling, and de-ice are the third bucket — typically 10-20% of revenue but 30%+ of gross margin. These are the fees you charge transient aircraft for parking, GPU, lav service, and winter de-ice. A busy Northeast FBO in January can pull $80K a day in de-ice alone.

Sub-leases and concessions (rental car, catering, maintenance shops on your leasehold) round out the stack. Small dollars individually, but every dollar flows through at 90%+ margin.

The Multiple: 6-10x EBITDA, and Why the Range Is So Wide

FBOs trade between 6x and 10x EBITDA, but the distribution is bimodal. Strategic consolidators — Signature Aviation (now owned by Global Infrastructure Partners), Atlantic Aviation (KKR/Macquarie), Ross Aviation, Modern Aviation, and Jet Aviation — pay 8-10x EBITDA for platform-quality assets. Regional buyers and family offices pay 5-7x EBITDA for everything else. The delta between those two buyer pools on the same asset can be $10 million or more.

What puts an FBO in the strategic bucket? Three things, in order of importance:

• Ground lease length. Strategics want 25+ years remaining. At 15 years, you lose a turn of EBITDA. Under 10 years, you're unsellable to institutional capital — period.
• Market position. Exclusive or near-exclusive FBO at a Class B/C airport with real business aviation traffic. Two-FBO airports trade at a discount because pricing power is capped.
• Fuel volume and traffic mix. 2M+ gallons of Jet-A with a healthy transient-to-based ratio. Pure based-tenant FBOs are worth less than transient-heavy sites.

The jump from 6.5x to 9x on $3M of EBITDA is $7.5 million of extra enterprise value. That's why lease extensions before a sale process are the single highest ROI activity an FBO owner can do.

The Ground Lease Is the Whole Deal

I cannot overstate this. The ground lease with the airport sponsor (usually a municipal or county authority) is the single most important document in an FBO sale. Buyers will read it before they read your P&L.

Key terms that move value: remaining term and extension options, fuel flowage fee structure, exclusivity or right of first refusal on new FBO entrants, reversion clauses on capital improvements, and assignability on a sale. I've seen deals die at the goal line because a ground lease required airport board approval for assignment and the board used it as leverage to extract new capital commitments from the buyer.

If you're planning to sell in the next 3-5 years, negotiating a lease extension now — even if it costs you higher flowage fees or a capital commitment — is almost always the right trade. A 30-year extension that costs you $200K a year in additional rent buys you two turns of multiple on exit. That's the math.

Real Estate: On the Lease or In a Separate Entity?

Sophisticated FBO owners separate the operating business from the leasehold improvements (hangars, terminal, fuel farm) into different entities. At exit, this lets you sell the OpCo at an EBITDA multiple while either selling the PropCo to a net-lease REIT like commercial real estate buyers at a cap rate, or keeping the PropCo as a long-term annuity collecting rent from the new FBO operator.

The arbitrage is real. An 8% cap rate on hangar rent equals a 12.5x multiple on that income stream versus 8-9x EBITDA inside the operating business. For a hangar-heavy FBO, the sum-of-parts can exceed the blended EBITDA valuation by 15-25%.

What Destroys FBO Value

Short lease. Already covered, but worth repeating. Under 15 years and you're not getting a strategic bid.

Environmental liability. Fuel farms mean USTs, spill history, and Phase I/II environmental reports. Any hint of contamination turns a 90-day diligence into a 9-month nightmare and knocks 10-20% off price. Clean up before you go to market.

Customer concentration. If one fractional operator or one charter company represents more than 25% of your fuel volume, buyers discount it hard. NetJets moving its hub to a competitor airport can cut your EBITDA in half.

Deferred CapEx. Old fuel trucks, corroding hangar doors, a terminal that hasn't been touched since 1998. Buyers quote the CapEx catch-up and deduct it from enterprise value dollar-for-dollar.

Second FBO on field. If the airport sponsor is talking about bringing in a competitor, your exclusivity premium evaporates overnight. Monitor airport board minutes obsessively.

Preparing for Sale: The 24-Month Playbook

The FBOs that sell at 9-10x EBITDA don't stumble into it. They prepare for 18-24 months before going to market.

Lock the lease. Negotiate the extension first. Everything else follows.

Clean the P&L. Normalize owner comp, strip out the personal airplane, the country club, the kids on payroll. Buyers will find it all in QoE — get there first and be ready to defend your adjusted EBITDA number.

Push hangar occupancy to 100%. Empty hangars tell buyers the local market is soft. Fill them, even at a discount, before you go to market.

Get a Phase I. Commission a fresh environmental report and remediate anything that shows up. Don't let the buyer's consultant be the one who finds the old fuel line.

Run a process. Do not sell to the first strategic that knocks. A real auction with Signature, Atlantic, Ross, Modern, and two family offices at the table typically adds 15-25% to the winning bid versus a negotiated one-off sale. If you want to see how this compares to other industry multiples, the aviation services space is one of the highest-multiple verticals outside of pure SaaS.

The Bottom Line

FBO valuation is lease-length math more than it is EBITDA math. The owners who understand that — and who spend 18 months fixing the lease, the environmental file, and the hangar occupancy before hiring a banker — are the ones who sell at 9x. Everyone else sells at 6.5x and wonders why. If you're running an FBO doing $2M+ of EBITDA with a decent lease, you have a valuable asset. Don't leave half of it on the table by running a bad process.