Gama Aviation Completes First Phase Of Sharjah FBO Redevelopment

GENEVA—Gama Aviation has announced that work is complete on a 36,000 m² parking apron at Sharjah International Airport.

The work marks the re-start of a larger project to deliver a business aviation center at the airport, including a 14,000 m² air-conditioned hangar, an enhanced MRO, and a VVIP terminal. The firm says the new center will open in the second quarter of 2025.

“We put the project on pause due to various economic challenges over the years that certainly we’re not unique to,” Tom Murphy, Gama’s managing director for FBOs, tells Show News during  the 2024 European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE). “We reignited it towards the end of last year but we’ve kept it quiet until now. We’ve been quietly progressing with the construction, and when we released the information to the market we wanted to show real progress.”

The next item on Murphy’s extensive to-do list is completion of a taxiway to link the site to the airport. “At the moment it’s landside, for construction,” he says. The firm’s airside teams—Gama has had a presence at Sharjah for a decade—will relocate in September, and aircraft will park on the new apron during construction of the hangar and the terminal.

Murphy says the private aviation market in the United Arab Emirates is up 150% on its pre-pandemic level, so an expanded facility is needed to keep up with current and projected demand.

Considerations for design and operating concepts for the new terminal may differ from other fixed-based operators due to the changing nature of utilization the company has seen in recent years.

“Typically, and historically, passengers have wanted to get on their aircraft as soon as possible,” Murphy says. “With an increase in the leisure market, we’ve seen passengers are now wanting an experience in the terminal—actually enjoying the experience, spending some more time there; turning up maybe an hour, two hours before their departure. People don’t think of business-jet travel in that way. But, certainly, in the Middle East—not at our other locations in the UK—we’ve seen that people want a bit more experience, and to enjoy the facilities.”

How this might feed into the customer experience remains to be seen, but Murphy is clear about how this changing use pattern is affecting Gama’s business mentality.

“Everyone has upped their game,” he says. “Not just what happens inside the terminal but how you can interact with and support the clients outside the walls of the terminal. We’re still working on a number of concepts we’re going to deliver in the lounge.”

The UAE’s apparently leading position in the potential adoption of electric vertical-take-off-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft is also playing a part in Gama’s thinking as the company constructs the new facilities. Sharjah’s position—between Ras Al Khaimah, an Emirate rising in popularity as a tourist destination, and Dubai—means Sharjah looks to be in the right place at the right time.

“We’ve got a blank canvas, and we want to make sure we capture all of the capabilities, all of the requirements, so we’re able to have a seamless journey with eVTOL,” Murphy says. “We’re engaging with the manufacturers of eVTOLs, we’re engaging with the key players in that segment, and learning—learning what they’re going to need, including from a ground service equipment perspective.

How do we safely handle these types? We’re ensuring that we’re going to have the capability to do that, because we’d be mad not to.”