FAA Upholds 82% Hangar Rent Increase at Centennial Airport; Tenants Drop Suit as NTSB Briefs on Fatal Florida Learjet 60 Crash

Tenants at Centennial Airport in Denver have dropped their lawsuit against the Denver location of jetCenters of Colorado after the FAA upheld the FBO's 82-percent increase in hangar rent, which took effect in April. The Centennial Airport Pilots Association (CAPA) and the Colorado Pilots Association tenants had filed a Part 13 complaint with the FAA, arguing that the rise in T-hangar rent from $660 to $1,200 a month was not "fair and reasonable," which would violate the airport's federal grant assurances. CAPA also filed a lawsuit in state court seeking an injunction to block the increase.

Separately, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been briefing from West Palm Beach on the Learjet 60 accident in Florida. The aircraft went down in a residential area near Cresthaven, Florida, at around 12:50 p.m. Nine people were aboard and all were killed.

Radio transmissions between the Learjet's pilots and air traffic control captured some of the flight's final moments and indicate a rapid descent from altitude. The pilot had radioed ATC to report light-to-manageable clear ice accumulation before the rapid descent. The cause of the accident has not been determined.

Both items were covered in the Airborne Unlimited daily news episode of Wednesday, November 4, 2026.

The Part 13 route is the formal way to ask the FAA whether an airport sponsor or tenant is meeting its federal grant assurances. Here the tenants' argument rested on a single test: whether a jump from $660 to $1,200 a month in T-hangar rent was fair and reasonable. The FAA's decision to uphold the increase answered that question against them.

With that finding in place, the state-court case seeking an injunction was dropped. For the pilots who rent T-hangars at Centennial, the new rate stands, and it has applied since April.

The Centennial outcome shows how little room tenants have once an FAA review treats an FBO's rent as fair and reasonable. Hangar space at a busy general aviation airport is scarce, and an operator that controls it can reprice it; the federal grant-assurance process is the main outside check, and in this case it did not constrain the increase. FBOs and airport sponsors elsewhere will read the result as evidence that large single-step increases can survive a Part 13 challenge, while tenant groups will weigh whether the complaint route is worth the legal cost.

The Learjet 60 accident points to a different kind of exposure. A reported ice accumulation followed by a rapid descent is a sequence that investigators will examine closely, but no cause has been established and nothing in the radio traffic settles it. Light and midsize jet operators generally treat any icing-related loss of control as a prompt to revisit training and procedures, and that scrutiny usually builds as the NTSB releases its findings.

The next milestone is what the NTSB publishes from its West Palm Beach briefings and the investigation that follows. Until the board states a cause, conclusions about the aircraft, the crew or the weather conditions remain premature.