If you know the history of aviation in Florida, you know that without Pan Am and Eastern Air Lines, the Florida of today would look very different.
When those two commercial airline companies began building their empires of flight in South Florida 100 years ago, there was no way for the rest of the world to get to Florida other than by boat.
Eastern and Pan Am may no longer exist, but they changed transportation in a big way when they chose to base their headquarters in Miami. That change reverberates today in the form of one of the world’s largest aviation and MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) sectors.
IBISWorld estimates the size of Florida’s MRO industry at $4.9 billion. More than $2.75 billion of that activity is clustered in Broward County around greater Fort Lauderdale. In recent months, several aviation companies solidified their presence in Broward by announcing capital investments and physical plant expansions.
VSE is a $2 billion MRO firm that relocated from Northern Virginia to Miramar in Broward County.
Photo courtesy of VSE
Among them are GA Telesis, VSE and Ontic. In March 2025, Fort Lauderdale-based GA Telesis, a global provider of integrated aviation services, closed on a strategic acquisition of AAR’s Miami-based landing gear overhaul and wheels and brakes businesses. The deal makes GA Telesis the largest independent landing gear MRO in the Americas.
GA Telesis added to its six-continent portfolio in December when it announced a five-year landing gear overhaul pact with a major U.S. carrier, covering the overhaul of the airline’s Airbus A320-family landing gear assemblies at GA Telesis’ facility in Medley, Florida.
When I asked GA Telesis CEO Abdol Moabery why he chose to establish the company’s headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, he said, “We started in Miami because Miami-Dade County has always been a great hub for aviation. We wanted to grow the company and expand the reach of our talent pool. Now, we’re smack in the middle of three large counties that do a lot of work in aerospace. Number two, Broward County was a much better place to live for a lot of our employees.”
The ability to recruit talent from Palm Beach State, Broward College, Florida International University and the University of Miami was critical, says Moabery. Being located near the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) has enabled the firm to grow quickly, he adds.
Abdol Moabery, GA Telesis CEO
“If the infrastructure wasn’t here, we wouldn’t be able to scale. The growth in air traffic flying out of FLL has been significant,” Moabery says. “We’re less than an hour from Palm Beach International Airport and less than an hour from Miami International Airport. A lot of our customers fly out of these three local airports. Being a company that operates in 30 countries, this location gives us great logistics and enables us to serve clients worldwide.”
Moabery says his billion-dollar firm will expand again. “We’re growing our business at 20% a year,” he says. “We’re growing every month. As it relates to corporate-level growth, that expansion will take place here in Fort Lauderdale. We’re going to have to build another office or move our headquarters out of our existing building just to keep up with the volume of growth, but we will stay in Fort Lauderdale.”
The company’s headquarters is just west of Interstate 95 and Commercial Boulevard about 1,000 yards from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. “Our MRO work is a half-mile from the west side of the runway,” says Moabery. “We have our eye on a building close by.”
How Talent Drives MRO Growth
Another MRO company growing in Broward is VSE Corp., which relocated in 2024 to the Miramar Park of Commerce, which has quietly become one of the most concentrated MRO clusters in South Florida. After decades of doing business in Northern Virginia, VSE acquired two Broward-based aviation/MROs: Kellstrom Aerospace and Vortex Aviation.
By moving to Broward, VSE joins an aerospace cluster that includes 1,600 companies and employs 40,000 workers, most earning wages well above the average pay in the region. VSE supports 350 high-wage jobs in Miramar now.
“We decided to put our corporate facilities in one of our MROs. I don’t believe in headquarters not being aligned with our business operations. What drove our move to Broward was the talent pool.”
— John Cuomo, President and CEO, VSE
“We had a few facilities in Miramar and Doral,” says John Cuomo, president and CEO of VSE. “We decided to put our corporate facilities in one of our MROs. I don’t believe in headquarters not being aligned with our business operations. What drove our move to Broward was the talent pool. It is not just technical talent here. The financial and support workers in this area have strong aviation backgrounds. That is important to us.”
Cuomo says VSE conducted an extensive site search before narrowing its shortlist to South Florida. “We will have four facilities in South Florida, so Miramar makes perfect sense for our new headquarters,” he says. “One of my biggest focus areas is talent. We have 2,600 employees at 60 locations globally, including 47 repair facilities, with annual revenue of just under $2 billion. Having a strong industry network of high-quality talent and FAA certifications in Broward is a major advantage.”
Cuomo says he also likes the area’s global connectivity. “This area has great connectivity to Europe and Latin America,” he says. “It started back in the Pan Am and Eastern Air Lines days. The people of Broward know that this is a great industry to have in their community.”
Ontic is investing $10 million into establishing a new MRO facility in the Miramar Business Centre Park in Broward County.
Photo courtesy of Ontic
A third aviation company, California-based Ontic, launched its first-ever dedicated MRO site in the Miramar Centre Business Park in November 2025. The firm is investing $10 million into a new 64,000-sq.-ft., FAA-approved MRO site, adding 150 new high-wage jobs.
Brian Sartain, CEO of Ontic, says workforce was the most critical factor. “I’ve been around aviation and MRO long enough to know that the people you staff your project with are the most important,” he says. “CareerSource Florida, Space Force Florida and the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance make this the most fertile place to grow our MRO business.”
The second biggest factor, he notes, is Florida’s business environment.
“People want to live in Florida because they don’t have to pay state income tax. The business taxes are not the lowest in the country, but they are in the lower third,” he says.
Indeed, analysis published earlier this month by the Tax Foundation found that IRS data show that between 2022 and 2023, Florida saw a net gain of 55,349 income tax filers from interstate migration, second only to Texas.
Sartain says Ontic looked at locations in South Florida and along the Space Coast a couple hours’ drive north around Cape Canaveral. “The Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, the Florida Department of Commerce and the Florida Department of Education all made us feel very welcome. I really like Florida, but I especially like Broward. I like that Broward is so welcoming and that they went out of their way to assist our site selection. Broward College and the local schools helped us put together an apprenticeship program too.”
California-based Ontic launched its first-ever dedicated MRO site in the Miramar Centre Business Park in November 2025.
Photo courtesy of Ontic
He adds that incentives were not the driver. “They were not the most important factor,” he says. “The most important thing was making sure we could rapidly ramp up. We are up to 100 new hires already.”
Sartain says Ontic doubled in size over the last five years and will double again in the next five. “We will be expanding in the future, for sure,” he tells Site Selection. He also credits the Miramar mayor’s office and Florida Power & Light with facilitating the move. “FPL played an integral part in our being able to set up successfully,” he says. “FPL did a really good job of helping us get started.”
CTS Selects Broward for New Plant
Bob Swindell, president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, says that aviation and MRO remain the No. 1 industry in Broward County. “It is kind of counter-intuitive, but this is a very attractive destination,” he says. “We have been branding this area for quite a while. When the pandemic forced people to consider moving, a lot of people came to Fort Lauderdale. The aviation growth has just continued.”
“We have over 100 FAA-certified aviation repair shops just in Broward County alone.”
– Bob Swindell, President & CEO, Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance
He cited CTS Engines as an example. In late September 2025, CTS, a global aviation engine maintenance provider, launched its new $15 million, 216,000-sq.-ft. MRO facility and global headquarters in Coral Springs just outside Fort Lauderdale. This new “Engine Hub” of CTS in Broward is now one of only two locations in the world where Airbus A380 engines are serviced. The other is in Dubai.
Broward County in South Florida
is home to a $2.75 billion
aviation/MRO cluster.
Source: Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance.
“This is an impressive operation,” says Swindell. “The A380 is the largest plane that Airbus makes. They are maintained only in Coral Springs and Dubai. When you realize how complex rebuilding those engines is, you quickly realize that workforce talent is the currency of economic development in this field.”
Swindell says that aviation firms like CTS are attracted to greater Fort Lauderdale because “we have over 100 FAA-certified aviation repair shops just in Broward County alone. For a long time, most of this work was clustered in Miramar. Now, we are seeing it move north to Coral Springs. One company relocated from California to Coconut Creek. People from all over the world recognize us.”
