Creating, Buying, and Selling FBOs

FBO Operating Cost Considerations

Before constructing or buying the rights to operate an FBO, it is important to consider the costs associated with operating it. In order to operate a successful FBO business, your profits will need to exceed these costs, plus the investment costs of initial construction or purchase. The operating costs for each individual FBO business are determined by the both the size of the FBO building as well a the size of the airport itself. Larger airports demand a higher price for leasing the available lot space.

For a detailed break-down of the various costs, please see the FBO Operation section to learn more.

Construction Costs Considerations

The base requirement for FBO construction is 10,000kg of Building Materials (BMs) and (1) days worth of Supplies per lot. Current prices on these items can be found on the bottom of the Airport Page, wherever these items are sold.

There are also two add-on construction items which you may choose to build onto the FBO building:

• Repair Shop - 2,000kg BMs regardless of FBO size.

• Passenger Terminal - 2,000kg BMs regardless of FBO size.

Examples:

• Building a small FBO on an "Airstrip" requires 10,000 kg of BMs and 10 kg of Supplies. 

• Building a medium FBO on a "Small Airport" requires 20,000kg BMs and 40kg of Supplies, and will occupy both available airport lots.

• Building a medium FBO on a "Small Airport" with a repair shop requires 22,000kg in total BMs and 40kg of Supplies

• Building a small FBO on a "Large Airport" requires 10,000kg in BMs and 30kg of Supplies.

• Building one large FBO on a 3-lot "Large Airport" requires 30,000kg in BMs and 90kg of Supplies.

Constructing The FBO

Any airport with an empty lot(s) is available to the FSE player base to operate an FBO business.  The lease right to the lot is filled on a first-come-first-serve basis and requires the player to haul in Building Materials, purchase supplies from the local airport authority (or bring them from another airport), and then construct the FBO building. 

Acquire Building Materials and Supplies

Once you find a suitable location to operate an FBO, you will need to have Building Materials and at least some Supplies at that airport. Building Materials are sold at only the largest airports in FSE, so look around at the larger FSE Airports to find the closest purchasing location. Unless you're constructing an FBO at one of these airports where the Building Materials are sold, you will need to purchase and fly them in yourself, or contract with another player to have them delivered. (A great use of the forums).

The amount of Building Materials you will require depends upon the size of the FBO you are constructing.  There is the main building itself, which requires 10,000kg of building material for each Airport Lot that you plan to occupy. If you plan to upgrade the FBO with a Maintenance Facility or a Passenger Terminal, those will require an additional 2,000kg each.  (note: only one maintenance or passenger terminal add-on is required per FBO building -- not "per lot".  If you build a large FBO building that spans across three airport lots, you will only need a single maintenance or passenger terminal add-on)

In addition to staging the Building Materials, you will also need to have a minimum of one-day worth of Supplies on-site in order to construct the new FBO building. It is recommended that you have enough supplies onsite to operate the FBO for a longer period of time - this way you won't find yourself needing to restock the new FBO too soon. See the FBO Operation section to learn more about how much supplies the FBO will need per day. 

Construct Basic FBO Building 

Once you have the required amount of BM's and Supplies onsite, you will notice a new option on the bottom of the "FBO > FBO" menu which shows that there are enough materials onsite to build an FBO. You can click that button to construct the FBO! If you are going to be constructing the FBO across multiple airport lots, you will need to construct the main building on the first lot, and then "build up" across the second lot a little bit later. 

Initial Operation Settings and "Going Live"

After the main building is constructed on a single lot, you are brought to the FBO editing screen. Here you can set the FBO's business name, fuel prices, and other items. 

After the main FBO Building is constructed, the FSE System will open it for business at the next Top or Bottom of the hour.

CAUTION: If you only started with 1 day worth of supplies, those supplies will be "consumed" at the next "Server Midnight" and the FBO will be shut back down. The server time zone is in Central European Time (UTC+1 in the winter and UTC+2 in the summer). 

Construct PT and MX Add-On Buildings

If you are planning on building a Passenger Terminal (PT) or Maintenance (MX) Repair Shop, you can elect to build these now from this FBO Edit screen, provided you have enough building materials in place to do so, or return to this Edit screen later if you still need to bring in more Building Materials.

Expanding Across Multiple Lots

If you want to operate a Medium or Large FBO, and the Airport Authority still has vacant lots at the airport, you can expand your basic ("Small") FBO Building by "Building Up".  To do this, return to the FBO Screen. The airport at which you have a basic FBO building AND enough Building Materials will display an option to "Build Up" the FBO. This will expand the FBO building to take up another lot at the airport. 

Tearing Down

If you no longer want to operate the FBO building, and you don't want to sell the rights to it, you can "tear down" the entire FBO, or just portions of it (if it is a Medium or Large FBO). There are four main reasons you may wish to demolish the FBO building (or parts of a building):

• • Downsizing ("Shrinking"): You can "downsize" a Large or Medium FBO to one or two sizes smaller. If you want to downsize the Large or Medium FBO, you can partially demolish just that part of the building that is occupying other airport lots. Once you demolish that part of the building, you can recover 60% of your original Building Materials which can then be used to build a separate FBO on the now-vacant lot. Alternatively, you can sell those Building Materials to other players, back to the system, or move them to another airport to construct a new FBO building.

• Moving: You may want to move the FBO building, supplies, and fuel to a different airport to resume operations at a new location. To do this, you must "tear down" the building. Due to construction losses, only 60% of the original Building Materials will be recovered after you tear down the building, so you will need to acquire the rest of the Building Materials before you can re-build at the new location. Any remaining Supplies and Fuel are not affected by the tear down, and can be moved to a different airport. Once at a different airport with empty airport lots, you can go through the process of Constructing an FBO and resuming your business in the new location.

• Liquidating: You may want to shutdown operations and sell your commodities for cash (usually done if you cannot another player to purchase the rights to operate the FBO). After you tear down the FBO, you can sell the recovered Building Materials, Supplies and Fuel for cash. BMs and Supplies can be sold back to the system, or to other FSE players or player-operated FBOs. Fuel can not be sold back to the system; so selling to other FSE players or player-operated FBOs is your only option for selling fuel.

• Sell partial operating rights: If you operate a Large or Medium FBO, and want to sell only the rights to some of the airport lots (but not all), you must first "downsize" the existing FBO structure. This will demolish the part of the building occupying one of the other lots, and you will be able to recover 6000kg of the original Building Materials. Once you acquire an additional 4000kg of BMs, you can construct a brand new FBO building on the now-vacant lot.  Important: The same operator cannot operate multiple FBO buildings at the same airport, so you will need to construct this new FBO using a different Group Account than the one that operated the original FBO. Once the new FBO building is constructed, you can elect to add-on maintenance and passenger facilities before attempting to sell the rights, or you can sell the rights as-is. If you operate a Large FBO, and want to sell the lease rights on the other two lots separately, you must tear-down twice and construct a new building on each lot in succession with different groups. 

Note: If two separate lots complete with passenger and repair terminals are brought into the same group, they will automatically combine. Fuel and supplies at the location are combined, however there can be only one passenger terminal and one repair facility per FBO. Even though there were originally two PT or MX add-on buildings, you will lose the Building Materials for these add-ons in the process of combining FBO buildings. This could be up to 8000kg of building materials in the case where three fully built single lots are combined into one group at one FBO (The second and third lots would lose any BM's invested in Passenger Terminals and Repair Facilities).

Tear Down Process:

On the Game World FBO page, there is an option labelled 'Tear Down'. Using this feature will dismantle the FBO building and remove it from the airport lot. Due to the construction losses of tearing down the building, only 60% of the original building materials used for construction will remain after you tear down the FBO building. 

When tearing down a multi-lot FBO, any BM's associated with a Passenger Terminal or Repair Shop will be refunded to you only when you tear down the building on the final lot.

Note: Group-operated FBOs. Only the Group Owner can dismantle an FBO. Group Staff cannot perform the tear-down function.

Purchasing lease rights to FBO

Instead of constructing an FBO, you may wish to purchase the rights to operate one that is already constructed. On the "FBO > Purchase FBO" menu page in the FSE Game World, you will find a current listing of available FBOs with rights for sale.

These are all player-operated entities, and are usually priced according to their building cost, the amount of fuel and supplies on-site, as well as other market conditions such as the popularity of the location. The FBO market does fluctuate over time, with prices rising and falling with with the FSE environment.

Purchasing the rights to operate an FBO can sometimes be more expensive than constructing an FBO building; however, purchasing is sometimes the only option if you are seeking an FBO at a specific airport or in a particular region.

Selling the operating rights to an FBO

You can put the FBO rights up for sale by adding a price in the 'Edit FBO' page. Entering a price will automatically list that FBO on the FBO For Sale page.

ALL Fuel and Supplies currently owned by the FBO operator are included in the sale of the FBO. If you wish to retain the fuel and supplies for yourself, you must transfer them to a new group/player account, or create Transfer Assignments to ship them to another airport.

If you only wish to sell the rights to one or two lots of a multi-lot FBO, see the above section on "tearing down".