🔒Portland Jetport FBO continues to invest: Opens $3.5M terminal and is adding hangar

When Henry Laughlin III took over Northeast Air at the Portland International Jetport from his father in 1985, the country was coming out of a major recession that hadn't been kind to the aviation industry.

Laughlin, 32 at the time, had a successful career in computer sales and didn't know much about running a business. Given the economic climate, that turned out to be a good thing. His lack of experience gave him freedom to explore and to look at the business with fresh eyes.

“I wasn't tied to any past,” he says. “I had no past.”

Since then, the company that his father, Henry “Sandy” Laughlin Jr., started in 1969 has grown from $2.5 million in sales and 20 employees to $60 million and 60 employees. Since its beginning, it has been a fixed-base operator at the jetport, providing services to both private and commercial aircraft.

On a recent tour, Laughlin pointed out Tamarack Winglets being installed on a private jet. The wing extensions save fuel and extend an airplane's life.

“It's revolutionary,” he says. “It's really exciting.”

Last year, Northeast Air opened a $3.5 million glass-fronted modern terminal. This fall, it's breaking ground on a hangar to store large jets.

Paul Bradbury, the jetport's director, says constant evolution is a key to Northeast Air's longevity.

“They're always adding equipment, technology,” Bradbury says. “And they do an exceptional job.”

Laughlin says it's all about grabbing opportunities. “Not that they all work out, but you always have to be looking.”

'One big opportunity'

When he took over the company, Laughlin visited aviation companies across the country that had survived the economic crash. “I looked at what they were doing and asked, 'How can I do that in Portland, Maine?'” he says. “Everything to me was one big opportunity.”

In 1985, Northeast Air — known then as North East Air Motive — focused on aircraft sales, maintenance and fueling.

Laughlin has made it a point to maintain the core principles that sustained the business in its first 16 years — dedication to employees and customers, quality service, fair prices.

He'd also learned through a lifetime of being around the business that it is “full of wonderful people.”

“But the biggest thing I liked is that I could run a company in my own vision,” he says. “It was on-the-job training, believe me. I made mistakes.”

Learning to run a business not only included understanding business finance and the nuts and bolts, but also how to create an engaged and motivated workforce, define vision and then get the team excited about it.

“All this while trying to manage risk,” he says. Over the years he's learned the power of relationships, how to build a great network of people with like-minded values and how important that is to success. He also learned to invest profits back into technology and equipment, to diversify and to follow the industry as it changed.

The airline industry was “in a mess” at the time, shredded by the recession. Laughlin picked up ground handling and de-icing services that airlines had previously done themselves.

An early success was winning a contract to supply Coast Guard aircraft to Australia in the late 1980s.

The business weathered challenges, such as fighting off a takeover attempt in the early 1990s.

In 2009, the company became the northeastern U.S. dealer for the Swiss company Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. There are six dealers nationwide and Northeast Air was one of 30 that applied.

Most recently, the company got the Tamarack Winglet contract, a year after first pursuing it.

Later, in his bare-bones office that has little more than a horseshoe desk scattered with papers and a computer, Laughlin says, “I'm trying to always be ahead of the game.”

Providing services for commercial airlines

The city in 2015 renewed the company's fixed-based operator license for 20 years, as well as granting one to MAC Air. Both companies also have 20-year options.

Northeast Air, though, is firmly entrenched, a business that General Manager Mark Goodwin says “touches every plane at the airport directly or indirectly.”

Duties include fueling the commercial carriers, as well as its general aviation customers, handling all de-icing and ground support for the commercial airlines.

The staff also sets up car rentals, hotel stays, restaurant reservations for private jet clients, aside from taking care of the aviation end. They're discreet enough not to name names of the clients, who are not only powerful businesspeople, but big names in entertainment.

The jetport's Bradbury says that Northeast Air's customer service focus is a major key to its success, and therefore the airport's, which pumps $1 billion into the area's economy a year.

Customer service also includes things like de-icing, Bradbury says.

“Last year we heard not one complaint.” He says that's an impressive feat when as many as 14 aircraft are jockeying to get out of Portland at 5 a.m.

Gateway to Maine

Northeast Air's role in the community is equally important, Laughlin says. He wants to create high-quality jobs in Maine, and also help find ways to close the skills gap, particularly for aircraft mechanics.

The company is active in PALS, the patient airlift service that transports patients to out-of-state hospitals, as well as a multiple sclerosis fundraiser in which staff dragged a 210,000-pound Boeing 757 down the runway. The day Laughlin was interviewed, staff were wearing pink shirts to show support for breast cancer awareness.

He also feels an obligation to the business community. “Our company helps create the first impression for people who come to Maine,” he says. “We're the gateway.”

Kristina Egan, executive director of the Greater Portland Council of Governments, says that Northeast Air's role isn't widely recognized, but its role is key. “They provide essential infrastructure for our economy,” she says.

A recent reception at the new terminal for the area's elected officials was an eye-opener for many. “They hadn't visited, they didn't know really who they were,” she says. “They were wowed.”

The impact the company has on those who fly in is valuable, she says, adding: “The impression it gives about Maine is that we're a place to be taken seriously.”

Bradbury says that the company's investment in the airport is proof of their commitment. “We can't have an airport without an FBO, and it's been an exception [48 years] that they've operated here.”

Laughlin's wife, Linda, is the company's special projects manager. He hopes their son, Jesse, a senior at Bates, will eventually work for the company.

First he wants him to “see what's out there and look at this from a distance.”

Back in the mid-80s, his father told him he could either run the company or his father would sell it.

Sandy Laughlin, who died in 2002, had a passion for aviation, but was also a firm believer in quality work and customer service. His son says that half a lifetime later, it's still about maintaining that legacy.

“When my father handed me the keys to the company, he never told me what to do,” Laughlin says. “He said, 'I hope you have as much fun in this industry as I had.' Then he walked out the door.

“I probably didn't appreciate it at the time, but I do now.”