Reading airport authority continues effort to take over fuel and other services at the airfield

Apr. 4—The Reading Regional Airport Authority has crafted proposals to purchase the assets of two fixed base operations at the airfield.

The authority approved a proposed agreement of sale for Reading Jet Center and Millennium Aviation at a meeting Tuesday. The proposed purchase price for Reading Jet Center is $9.2 million, and the cost of Millennium would be $4.7 million.

The companies have not yet seen the proposals.

If the sale goes through, the authority would not buy the companies, meaning they would not assume any liabilities they hold. Instead, they would be purchasing each company's assets.

The sale proposals are the latest step in the authority's bid to take over as the sole provider of fuel and other services at the airfield, a move it is allowed to make based on Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

The authority and the companies have 90 days to consider the proposal. Authority members said its final approval — and the final sale prices — will be contingent on securing financing and on a study being done about the potential sale.

At a meeting last month, the board hired Houston-based JLL Valuation & Advisory Services for $30,000 to conduct a study of a potential sale of the airport's two existing fixed base operations.

Berks County Commissioner Chairman Christian Leinbach said the firm has been tasked with providing information on three components that will help the board decide if it makes financial sense to exercise its proprietary exclusive right to be the sole FBO at the airfield.

Those components are the purchase price of the two existing FBOs, the cost to convert their operations to the authority and their ongoing operational costs.

"There is no way that I support proceeding unless it's clear that this creates an additional positive cash flow for the airport," Leinbach said Tuesday. "That's really what the opportunity is."