apr-2017c

98 99 uled license and began an ambitious expansion project that involved adding international desti- nations and acquiring larger and faster aircraft. The company became Air Turks & Caicos in order to serve key international destinations, with daily scheduled flights to cities in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rico. “We rebranded the company to take advantage of all of the growth in the tourism sector.We had all these people com- ing, and working, and having businesses, and growing their empires in the Turks and Caicos. So our focus was to try and take advantage and become the premier way for them to get from one island to another.” Gardiner also expanded his own empire to include five main operating companies. “All the companies in my group are one hundred percent owned by me. There is an FBO (Fixed- Based Operator) called Provo Air Center, and we’ve just been named the best Caribbean FBO for the second year in a row.We also have a ground handling company called Flight Support and, of the ten airlines flying into Turks and Caicos, we do the ground handling for nine of them–Delta, United, British Airways, Air Can- ada,WestJet, Jet Blue and others. Ground han- dling is passenger and baggage services. Once INTERCARIBBEAN AIRWAYS the airplane lands, we marshal all the passen- gers off; we take all the bags off and when peo- ple come to the airport, we do all the check-in, security scanning, etc.We’ve got a third com- pany called Caribbean Aviation Maintenance Services. It’s a Turks and Caicos MRO–Mainte- nance Repair Organization.We provide on-call maintenance for those airlines as well as for our airline and the FBO when we have tran- sient and visiting aircraft, business jets, etc.We also have another company called Professional Aviation Security Services; we deal with all the security aspects of protecting aircraft and pas- senger assets while they’re on the ground in the Turks and Caicos.We also have a fueling oper- ation–Caribbean Aviation Fuel Services that provides fueling to, I’d say, the greatest percent- age of all the aircraft traffic that comes into the Turks and Caicos. So, it’s a very encompassing aviation group.” In 2008, Gardiner bought out his main com- petitor, doubling the size of his operations, overnight. “We were competing FBOs, compet- ing ground handlers, competing airlines, com- peting maintenance organizations, competing fueling,”he explains.“At the time, the economy was very busy in terms of real estate development and the person who had owned the other com- pany had gotten involved in a couple of projects, and so we made an offer and bought it.”With the acquisition, Gardiner now managed a larger percent of the islands’ air services business. In 2013, the company went through yet an- other transition. “From 2009 to 2012, the econ-