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Pease to welcome Pan Am

Operation could bring 300-500 jobs
By Christine Gillette
Staff Writer
8/11/98

PORTSMOUTH - Pan American Airways, once a giant in the aviation industry, is coming to Pease International Tradeport.

The Pease Development Authority's Marketing Committee yesterday gave its endorsement to a plan by Pan Am to consolidate its airplane-maintenance operations into a 200,000-square-foot hangar on Aviation Avenue.

The move could bring 300 to 500 jobs to Pease over the next three to five years, according to Pan Am President David Fink.

"We think there's a real opportunity here," Fink said.

PDA officials estimate the Pan Am operation will pay $80,000 to lease 14 Aviation Ave. in its first year, increasing to at least $400,000 annually over the next decade.

The Pan Am project, which for now will focus on maintenance, could mean the return of air-passenger service to Pease. Fink estimated yesterday that the airline could be flying scheduled flights from Pease as early as six months from now.

PDA officials are happy about the plan either way.

"This is a pretty exciting project from the aviation standpoint," PDA Executive Director George Meyer said.

The Marketing Committee voted unanimously to pass the proposal along to the PDA board of directors for its approval, expected to come Thursday.

While Pan Am is a name with a history in aviation, it is a reconstituted version of the company that will come to Pease.

The airline, which once carried thousands of passengers around the globe, fell on hard times after one of its planes exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. The work of terrorists, the crash killed everyone on board, including a pilot from Newmarket.

Fink and partner Timothy Mellon acquired Pan Am earlier this summer. The pair paid $30 million to bring Pan Am out of bankruptcy and it's now debt-free, according to Fink.

This isn't the first time Fink and Mellon have brought a company back from the edge. Fink is president of Guilford Transportation Industries Inc., which bought the troubled Maine Central Railway and B & M Railroad. The operations are now profitable, Fink said.

Fink told the Marketing Committee yesterday that his company's conservative fiscal policies have made it successful, and he plans to apply the same principles to Pan Am.

The move to Pease will mean closing down a handful of maintenance facilities in Florida, according to Fink. Some of the workers at those facilities will lose their jobs, but some will move with the business to Pease, he said.

Fink said he learned of Pease, which he assumed had no more room for aviation businesses, from New Hampshire Congressman John E. Sununu about a month ago, Fink said.

Fink stated that as a New Hampshire resident, he's happy Pan Am will be able to open the maintenance facility in the Granite State.

"We see this as an opportunity for ourselves and an opportunity for the community," Fink said.

The company plans to work with local technical schools to institute an apprentice program that will train aviation-industry workers, ensuring the company has a labor pool to draw from.

Marketing Committee member George Lovejoy, who is also involved with the state's School-To-Work initiative, said he was pleased to hear of Pan Am's plans.

Meyer is also pleased with the proposal. "I think that this is a terrific project," he said, noting Pan Am's New Hampshire connection and its plans to create jobs. "It just doesn't get any better than that."

Meyer said the negotiations with Pan Am were some of the fastest the PDA has seen, taking only a few weeks to form a letter of intent on the project. Meyer said Pan Am is in such a rush to move into the building, the PDA may agree to let the company in early to start renovations.

Not everyone was happy with yesterday's vote, however.

Harold Hammer, operations director of Allied Air Freight, questioned the PDA's decision to allow Pan Am to lease space at 75 cents per square foot, when his company has offered $1.50 per square foot in the past and been denied.

Meyer disagreed with Hammer's assertion that the PDA wasn't playing fair, stating that Pan Am will eventually increase its rent to at least $2 per square foot, more than Allied was willing to pay. Also, he said, the PDA was willing to grant Allied a license to do business at Pease but the authority had been unable to locate the company for months to offer the license deal.