The Airport That Can’t Keep Up
Cayman’s Private Jet Boom and What It Signals About the Island’s HNW Growth Ceiling
On a bright Saturday afternoon at Owen Roberts International Airport, some of the world’s most expensive private aircraft were parked nose to tail on the apron. Gulfstreams and Challengers gleaming in the Caribbean sun. Ground crews weaving between wingtips in cone-marked lanes. Arriving visitors threading through the congestion — past a plane that has been slowly sinking into the grass for over twenty years — to reach a cramped building bearing the sign: General Aviation Terminal.
Welcome to the Cayman Islands — where the wealth strategy is working, and the infrastructure is not keeping up.
The Strategy Is Working. The Infrastructure Isn’t.
Post-pandemic, the Cayman Islands Government made a deliberate choice: target high-net-worth visitors over volume tourism. The logic was straightforward — one private jet arrival generates more economic impact per capita than a planeload of package tourists. Hotels, restaurants, marine operators, and real estate agents all benefit disproportionately from this demographic.
The data validates the thesis. Private jet movements at Owen Roberts have risen from 3,437 in 2014 to 6,106 in 2025 — nearly double, and a new record. Michael Jordan’s grey elephant-print Gulfstream G650ER has been spotted on the tarmac. The HNW visitor strategy is, by the numbers, succeeding.
But the general aviation terminal handling that traffic was already described as “too restricted to accommodate the number of passengers” in Cayman’s own 2014 airports masterplan — when it was processing 77% fewer movements than today. Fixed-base operators reported at that time that facilities exceeded capacity during peak periods “3–4 times per year.” That was then. The problem has compounded, unsolved, for over a decade.
Turning Away Billionaires
The practical consequence is being felt in real time. Cayman-based entrepreneur Frank Schilling is direct about it:
“On the busiest days, we’ll land and they won’t have room for us on the ramp.” — Frank Schilling, Cayman entrepreneur
“Think about what this means. He’s coming with an entourage, going to be spending $20,000 a day for hotel rooms, $4,000 a day in meals. You don’t want to be telling these people don’t come.” — Frank Schilling
His proposed fix is blunt and instructive:
“They need to put the asphalt down to park the planes. Putting down pavement is always the cheapest part. Nothing gives you more bang for the buck.” — Frank Schilling
Schilling points to St. Maarten — the famously ramshackle gateway to ultra-luxury St. Barts — as proof that infrastructure doesn’t need to be elegant to serve billionaires. It just needs to be functional. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt — collectively worth $200 billion — have been observed getting customs stamps at a delaminated melamine desk. They keep coming back.
Cayman’s problem isn’t that the lounge isn’t nice enough. It’s that there’s nowhere to park the plane.
$49 Million Shelved. A PPP on the Table.
The previous government had a plan: a $49 million publicly funded rebuild of the General Aviation Terminal, delivered in phases. At least $1.2 million was spent on designs and a construction tender process. A $1.264 million design contract was awarded to Dutch firm Avia NG Airport Consultants in April 2024. Phase one — covering apron expansion, a new GA apron, heliport relocation, and a marine dock — went to tender.
Then a new government arrived and cancelled it. Not because the need had gone away, but because the capital budget was needed elsewhere: the main commercial terminal, the prison, the landfill, the cargo port, the roads. Infrastructure Minister Jay Ebanks framed the decision plainly:
“What we don’t want to do is go and spend that money into a general aviation terminal when I have an airport that’s bursting at the seams right now.” — Infrastructure Minister Jay Ebanks
The replacement approach is a public-private partnership. A private operator funds the build, recoups through a long-term lease and revenue streams — plane parking fees, aviation fuel concessions, lounge services. A new business case has been commissioned to determine the right formula.
The previous government’s own Outline Business Case had explicitly assessed and rejected the PPP model, arguing revenue generation would be “hard to distinguish from the business-as-usual option” and that PPP procurement would involve “lengthier timelines.” The new government has reached the opposite conclusion. One of them will be right.
The Fee Gap Is Real
One data point from the Outline Business Case deserves attention: Cayman’s average per-unit aeronautical fee is US$65.40. The Caribbean average is US$94.97. Barbados charges US$182.20. Jamaica charges US$114.65. Cayman is charging less than half what Barbados charges to serve a dramatically wealthier clientele.
Whatever the ownership structure of the rebuilt terminal — public, private, or partnership — there is clear pricing power available that the island is not currently exercising. A well-structured PPP operator would price to market from day one.
The CI Mavericks Read
We live and operate here. This isn’t abstract market analysis — it’s the context in which we conduct business, meet members, and evaluate the long-term investability of the Cayman Islands as a jurisdiction.
1. The HNW thesis is validated, not threatened. Nearly doubling private jet arrivals in a decade is not a sign of a jurisdiction in decline. It is a sign of a jurisdiction that has correctly identified its comparative advantage and is executing on it. The infrastructure constraint is a capacity problem, not a demand problem.
2. The PPP path is the right call — if executed with urgency. A private operator with real revenue upside — parking, fuel, lounge, concessions — has genuine incentive to build and maintain a world-class facility. The fee gap to Barbados and Jamaica suggests the economics work. The risk is procurement speed: Cayman cannot afford another decade of inaction while the apron fills up.
3. For real assets investors, this is signal. When billionaires are being turned away from an island’s airport on peak days, that island has a supply problem, not a demand problem. Supply problems in jurisdictions with geographic constraints — a 76-square-mile island — tend to resolve in favour of asset holders, not new entrants. Cayman real estate, office space, and marine infrastructure are all downstream of the same dynamic.
The asphalt needs to go down. In the meantime, the demand isn’t going anywhere.
Source: Cayman Compass, James Whittaker, April 28, 2026. Published for informational and educational purposes only. This document does not constitute legal, tax, or investment advice.