PROFILE • JORGE COLINDRES
Lucky to be registering success
Aruba and San Marino are key business aviation hubs thanks to Sir Jorge Colindres Marinakis, founder, owner and executive chairman of Aviation Registry Group. His next target is Gibraltar. But this is still just the start. Words: Alejandro Blanco
Lucky smile: Sir Jorge Colindres is continuing to grow his aircraft registration empire.
PROFILE
Lucky smile: Sir Jorge Colindres is continuing to grow his aircraft registration empire.
JORGE COLINDRES
Lucky to be registering success
Aruba and San Marino are key business aviation hubs thanks to Sir Jorge Colindres Marinakis, founder, owner and executive chairman of Aviation Registry Group. His next target is Gibraltar. But this is still just the start. Words: Alejandro Blanco
SIR JORGE Colindres Marinakis was broke. And for the first time in his life, the former special forces navy officer was also afraid.
Matters beyond his control meant that his first business – the Honduras Aircraft Registry – was no longer viable. His business partner said they should return all the money to their customers.
Jorge agreed. But it left him with just $5. One dollar for each of his children with Christmas a few weeks away.
His wife told him that their children needed milk. Jorge stopped at a gas station in Miami on the way home from the office. On impulse he bought a scratch card for $1. He won $500. “I went back home like I was the richest man on earth,” he says.
Jorge was already working on the launch of The Registry of Aruba which quickly became a commercial success. As was the San Marino Aircraft Registry, which he started in 2012 with his son David and daughter-in-law Lindy Castillo. The Gibraltar Aircraft Registry is coming in 2026.
Like the scratchcard, Jorge has had several serendipitous moments that have changed his life. But he has always acted on them. The most significant was when he was working as the Honduran assistant naval attache when an American aircraft broker needed a translator to help him get a Honduran passport for his wife.
Joining the navy was Jorge’s way of rebelling against his family. He came from a proud military family – his father had been head of the navy and his uncle head of the Honduras Armed Forces. They both told him that he should not sign up.
“They were like: ‘This guy’s a civilian. He’s not made like us. He wants to have a good life. He is a playboy,’” says Jorge. “But I am a contrarian by nature. You tell me I cannot do something. I will do it. So, I joined the navy and served in the special forces just to prove that I could do it. All the bosses liked me a lot. I rose quickly because I was not only good at taking orders but also good at executing orders.”
But, at heart, he was always an entrepreneur. When he injured his knee, he was made commissioner of a naval base, where he loved buying supplies and making sure things ran smoothly. If you know Jorge, you can easily see him as an officer version of Sergent Bilko.
Jorge, who had graduated from Sweden’s World Maritime University, was also involved in running the country’s shipping registry, which was then part of the navy. Honduras had more than 3,000 ships registered at the time making it the world’s third largest merchant fleet.
Jorge was an assistant naval attache when he met Wayne Hilmer, the founder of Omni Aircraft Trading in the embassy. He was walking by and offered to help out. Hilmer was one of the most successful aircraft brokers at the time. He was also great at picking and supporting young talent. Omni’s alumni include Bob Rabbitt, Don Bass and Chris Ellis who went on to launch AvPro. He saw something in Jorge.
They got chatting. Hilmer liked the young naval officer and offered him a job. Jorge thought about it overnight, accepted and agreed to move to Florida. He did not negotiate a salary and worked only for commission. “Before I knew it, I was driving to Ocean Reef Club, where Wayne lived, from Miami every day,” says Jorge.
Hilmer had always been obsessed with data. In the days before services like AMSTAT and JETNET, Omni Aircraft Trading had built a trading floor. This was powered by an IBM computer the size and colour of a large kitchen island that features in a fantastic 1981 promotional video (which suggests that the brokerage also had a full-time employee playing a grand piano in the background). Omni had invested a lot trying to track owners and aircraft. Hilmer had also invested in a company trying to do the same thing with property.
In 1991 Jorge and Hilmer launched the Honduras Aircraft Registry. Oscar Wyatt, a self-made oil refiner, decorated air force pilot and close friend of Hilmer, became their first customer. Jorge, Hilmer and Wyatt went on to work on many other businesses together including oil exploration.
The Honduras Aircraft Registry started well. It quickly gained a reputation for considering complicated operations and got to 100 aircraft. Early projects included registering Boeing 707 commercial refuelling tankers for NATO countries.
When Carlos Reina was appointed President of Honduras in 1994, they realised their business was no longer viable. Reina was not keen on the registry and generally less pro-business. There was no ill will, the new president was a family friend and Jorge understood how politics work. Jorge’s grandfather was director of the military academy and head of state of the Honduras military junta between 1956 and 1957. His great-uncle was president of Honduras from 1929 to 1933.
Jorge started working on Plan B: Aruba, the small Caribbean island 15 miles north of Venezuela, that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
A new angle on EBACE: Jorge Colindres with colleagues from the Registry of Aruba: Felix Echavarria and Tricia Matuly.
“Qatar Airways was founded on my couch.”
David Colindres and his father Jorge have worked together for more than 30 years.
Destination Aruba
There was, of course, serendipity involved with Aruba. Jorge had attended a Honduran presidential inauguration when he was chief of staff to the head of the Honduran navy. He got chatting with a young Aruban senator who was sitting behind him. They became friends and kept in touch. When the senator became minister of transport and deputy prime minister, he called Jorge to tell him that he should move to Aruba.
Jorge did not hesitate. You could see why it was attractive opportunity for the minister. Aruba, which relies heavily on tourism, had just been downgraded by the US FAA to a Category II Registry. This was embarrassing for the country. Jorge vowed to get it back to a category I. He did.
The agreement was that Jorge’s International Air Safety Office would manage all the administration and marketing for the Registry of Aruba from its Miami office. It would also pay for training, equipment and staff in Aruba. If it was a success, it would provide enough revenue to pay for the entire budget of Aruba’s Directorate of Aviation, saving the island’s taxpayers money. The Registry of Aruba launched in 1995. US FAA rated it category I in June 1996 and it has remained Category I ever since.
Jorge stresses that this achievement was because of close cooperation with the Department of Civil Aviation of Aruba (DCAA). He says that the DCAA, under the leadership of Edwin Kelly, director general continues to play a central role in ensuring that Aruba maintains the highest international safety standards.
From the start they focused on providing fantastic customer service. At first it was just Jorge and Sue Cuestas, now chief operating officer, using fax machines. “It was very labour intensive and not unusual for one of us to be in the office with a child sleeping under a desk,” says Jorge. The office at the time was in a rough part of Miami and very different to the company’s luxurious offices now.
“This was when we sat down and asked: ‘Where do we want to go? Is it going to be an adventure and just register a few planes or we do want to build a big serious business?’” says Jorge. “I said: ‘I am not going to stop until we have a group of companies.’ Now we have three aircraft registries and two memorandums of understandings signed with other countries.” These registries are now part of Aviation Registry Group of Companies.
Jorge knew that there was no place for registers of convenience and from the start he made sure that there was a split between the regulatory side and the business side. He stresses that aircraft inspectors have full authority.
“We have a formal contract, which I endorse and the regulators endorse and the inspector endorses the moment that there is something that needs to be enforced,” says Jorge. “They don’t comment or report to us. They go straight to the Civil Aviation or whoever they need to report within the authority.”
When he first launched, Jorge found that people working for the UK Civil Aviation Authority where often the most sceptical. He has enjoyed winning them round.
“There was one senior UK CAA inspector who was always unfriendly. He would barely shake our hands. But over time he became more friendly, would chat with us and eventually drink tequila with us, and then he ended up as a great lead inspector for the registries,” says Jorge. More than half of the company’s inspectors worked at the UK CAA.
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Lindy Castillo is vice president of the San Marino Aircraft Registry. Husband David (who is Jorge’s son) is its president.
Consulting
The registries are the most visible part of Jorge’s business, but it has also worked on many big and varied consulting projects. “Qatar Airways was founded on my couch,” says Jorge. The airline’s first aircraft for international travel were registered in Aruba.
Air Safety Office was closely involved in the launch of Kazakhstan’s Air Astana together with Sir Richard Evans, former chairman of BAE. In 2009 the European Union blacklisted Kazakh Airlines from flying into Europe. Air Astana, however, was exempt because it was under the oversight of Aruba. Air Safety Office then worked with Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Authority to help the country successfully pass an ICAO audit.
Some projects were complex. Jorge worked on one putting Honeywell Avionics and Pratt & Whitney engines on an Aruban-registered Ilyushin 96M aircraft – working with Russia’s Rosaviatsiya, the US FAA and Aruba’s Department of Civil Aviation under a shadow certification. This worked but the project was killed by the collapse of the Russian economy in 1998.
Flying the world
Luck helps, but Jorge and his team work long hours. “You can get a reply within seconds,” says one holder of a San Marino Aircraft Operator’s Certificate. “You can literally WhatsApp them any time of the day. They are amazingly responsive but also take regulations very seriously.”
Jorge also travels relentlessly. He typically does one week in the office followed by three weeks travelling.
“My grandad was Greek, my mum was Greek-Latina, so we were always very international, always travelling when we were little kids,” says Jorge. He is also happy to be the first into what others call frontier markets. Many early clients were from the Middle East, Asia, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Asia and Latin America. He is excited about Saudi Arabia and India now.
“In the early days in a market, aircraft transactions are very creative. There was a lot of adventure with the first deals including Western aircraft in Moscow, for example,” says Jorge. “Look we were coming from Honduras. You send a guy from the Midwest and they need bodyguards with machine guns, it helps that I was from the jungle. In places like Russia in the 1990s, we didn’t see the threat. We saw that these guys needed good service. We helped open the market for everybody.”
He has also been to every micro-state in Europe looking for new locations for his next registry.
Picking San Marino
Aruba was working well but was restricting the size of the registry. Jorge wanted other options. “I stood next to a big map in my office, shut my eyes and went: ‘Wherever my finger lands I will visit’. Boom. It landed on San Marino.”
His wife, Yolanda, a lawyer, had a friend from college who lived nearby who was helpful. Jorge also wrote to the director of the CAA. The government did not respond, but he travelled there anyway. “I took a plane to San Marino via Rome,” says Jorge. “When I arrived at Rimini Airport there was one of those crazy spring storms. It was like the end of the world. My luggage did not arrive, so I went to the ministry drenched through. I think they gave me the contract because they felt sorry for me. They wanted to help me out. I loved San Marino from the start.”
Initial talks were positive, but then the process stalled. A few years later they got the call saying that the country wanted to go ahead. They asked Jorge to travel over with his son David, who had been working with him for a decade. The only problem was that the key meeting was scheduled the Monday after David and Lindy’s wedding. Lindy had also been working at the company for six years.
“The business was small in those days. Lindy and I had been closely involved in the launch, so she actually convinced me to go with my father,” says David.
David and Lindy briefly moved to San Marino for the launch. They returned to Miami and were discussing who should run the registry when the realised that they wanted to. In 2013 they moved full time and have brought their two sons up there. David and Lindy are also shareholders alongside Jorge.
“I am so proud of what David and Lindy have achieved. They have done an amazing job in San Marino,” says Jorge. The family credits a lot of the success to the San Marino government, particularly to Marco Conti, director general and captain Dennis Michelotti of San Marino's Civil Aviation Authority. “Marco has been essential to the success since the launch. He is a fantastic director general.” San Marino made Jorge a Knight of the Equestrian Order of Saint Agatha to recognise his services to the country.
Lindy Castillo is vice president of the San Marino Aircraft Registry. Husband David (who is Jorge’s son) is its president.
Consulting
The registries are the most visible part of Jorge’s business, but it has also worked on many big and varied consulting projects. “Qatar Airways was founded on my couch,” says Jorge. The airline’s first aircraft for international travel were registered in Aruba.
Air Safety Office was closely involved in the launch of Kazakhstan’s Air Astana together with Sir Richard Evans, former chairman of BAE. In 2009 the European Union blacklisted Kazakh Airlines from flying into Europe. Air Astana, however, was exempt because it was under the oversight of Aruba. Air Safety Office then worked with Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Authority to help the country successfully pass an ICAO audit.
Some projects were complex. Jorge worked on one putting Honeywell Avionics and Pratt & Whitney engines on an Aruban-registered Ilyushin 96M aircraft – working with Russia’s Rosaviatsiya, the US FAA and Aruba’s Department of Civil Aviation under a shadow certification. This worked but the project was killed by the collapse of the Russian economy in 1998.
Flying the world
Luck helps, but Jorge and his team work long hours. “You can get a reply within seconds,” says one holder of a San Marino Aircraft Operator’s Certificate. “You can literally WhatsApp them any time of the day. They are amazingly responsive but also take regulations very seriously.”
Jorge also travels relentlessly. He typically does one week in the office followed by three weeks travelling.
“My grandad was Greek, my mum was Greek-Latina, so we were always very international, always travelling when we were little kids,” says Jorge. He is also happy to be the first into what others call frontier markets. Many early clients were from the Middle East, Asia, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Asia and Latin America. He is excited about Saudi Arabia and India now.
“In the early days in a market, aircraft transactions are very creative. There was a lot of adventure with the first deals including Western aircraft in Moscow, for example,” says Jorge. “Look we were coming from Honduras. You send a guy from the Midwest and they need bodyguards with machine guns, it helps that I was from the jungle. In places like Russia in the 1990s, we didn’t see the threat. We saw that these guys needed good service. We helped open the market for everybody.”
He has also been to every micro-state in Europe looking for new locations for his next registry.
Picking San Marino
Aruba was working well but was restricting the size of the registry. Jorge wanted other options. “I stood next to a big map in my office, shut my eyes and went: ‘Wherever my finger lands I will visit’. Boom. It landed on San Marino.”
His wife, Yolanda, a lawyer, had a friend from college who lived nearby who was helpful. Jorge also wrote to the director of the CAA. The government did not respond, but he travelled there anyway. “I took a plane to San Marino via Rome,” says Jorge. “When I arrived at Rimini Airport there was one of those crazy spring storms. It was like the end of the world. My luggage did not arrive, so I went to the ministry drenched through. I think they gave me the contract because they felt sorry for me. They wanted to help me out. I loved San Marino from the start.”
Initial talks were positive, but then the process stalled. A few years later they got the call saying that the country wanted to go ahead. They asked Jorge to travel over with his son David, who had been working with him for a decade. The only problem was that the key meeting was scheduled the Monday after David and Lindy’s wedding. Lindy had also been working at the company for six years.
“The business was small in those days. Lindy and I had been closely involved in the launch, so she actually convinced me to go with my father,” says David.
David and Lindy briefly moved to San Marino for the launch. They returned to Miami and were discussing who should run the registry when the realised that they wanted to. In 2013 they moved full time and have brought their two sons up there. David and Lindy are also shareholders alongside Jorge.
“I am so proud of what David and Lindy have achieved. They have done an amazing job in San Marino,” says Jorge. The family credits a lot of the success to the San Marino government, particularly to Marco Conti, director general and captain Dennis Michelotti of San Marino's Civil Aviation Authority. “Marco has been essential to the success since the launch. He is a fantastic director general.” San Marino made Jorge a Knight of the Equestrian Order of Saint Agatha to recognise his services to the country.
“We saw that these guys needed good service. We helped open the market ...”
Festive fun: Enjoying a party delivers a welcome break after long hours delivering top quality service.
The success of San Marino did not stop the family for looking for new projects. In 2019, they started talking with Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory. The Gibraltar Aircraft Registry will open in 2026. Jorge says they are excited to be launching with a strong team including Chris Purkiss as director general (he held the post of director of the former Department of Civil Aviation since 2008 and before that was station commander for RAF Gibraltar). Neil Williams, the new head of airworthiness at the Gibraltar Civil Aviation Authority, was head of airworthiness policy and rulemaking. He spent much of his time working out policies following the UK’s exit from the EU.
As well as launching Gibraltar, they are also in talks with other countries. “Competition makes you better when you put the teams to compete against each other,” says Jorge. “Things change. People get more creative. The client base likes it because everybody strives for better service.”
Jorge and David have now worked together for more than 30 years. “We never argue,” says David. “We did a bit back in the day when I first started, but not for years. We have worked together for so long we tend to agree. It is the same with Lindy – we have been working together for more than 20 years – before we were a couple.”
Jorge says that one of his skills is his ability to read people. “I can tell very quickly which way to take a meeting,” he says. “Sometimes you need to hold back and stop talking business. But with David we are almost telepathic. We can be thousands of miles apart and I will know what he is thinking.”
The Registry of Aruba celebrated its 30th birthday at the 2025 Dubai Airshow at a party with the Gypsy Kings performing. But Jorge says that this is still just the start.
“I want to make the group bigger. This is never going to end and it's just going to get better,” says Jorge. “When people start going out into space, we will be ready. We are not sitting just waiting. We are looking at registries for unmanned vehicles and space. Get ready for a Papa-4 Aruba space shuttle or one registered in Gibraltar.”
You would not want to bet against him. There was, however, one occasion when luck did not appear. Many years ago, Hilmer and Jorge spent months treasure hunting in the Caribbean.
They had a ship called La Esperanza (the Hope), a Piper aircraft and a team of divers. They travelled across the Caribbean down to Colombia. But they did not find a sunken galleon filled with gold. “We found nothing,” says Jorge. “But to be honest, when it was choppy we tended to stay and enjoy ourselves in the harbour.”
No one is lucky all the time.
Aviation Registry Group of Companies
ARUBA
Aircraft prefix: P4
Location: Southern Caribbean, 15 miles northwest of Venezuela
Constitutional status: Autonomous country part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Population: 108,880
Capital: Oranjestad
Official languages: Dutch and Papiamento; English and Spanish widely spoken
Area: Slightly larger than Washington DC
History: The Arawak were the indigenous people of Aruba. Claimed by Spain in 1499 but largely left alone, it became a haven for pirates and buccaneers. It was acquired by the Netherlands in 1636. It had a gold rush in the 19th century.
Aruba seceded the Netherlands Antilles in 1986 and became a separate, semi-autonomous member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Talking points: Aruba is officially the sunniest Caribbean island. The temperature is almost constant at about 27deg C (81deg Fahrenheit). Aruba’s Divi Divi and Fofoti trees always point southwest, following the trade winds. Aruba is also the wreck-diving capital of the Caribbean.
SAN MARINO
Aircraft Code: T7
Location: Surrounded by Italy.
Constitutional status: Republic
Population: 34,000
Capital: The City of San Marino
Official languages: Italian and Sammarinese
Area: One third of Washington DC
History: Saint Marinus, a stonemason, first established a monastic settlement on Mount Titano in 301AD fleeing Christian persecution by the Roman Emperor Diocletian. San Marino claims to be the world’s oldest republic. The Papal States formally recognised San Marino’s sovereignty in 1631. Napoleon offered San Marino territorial expansion in 1797, but the country refused and because it was a republic he left it alone. Abraham Lincoln was given honorary citizenship when the US declared independence.
Talking points: The San Marino national football team has only won three out of the 219 international matches it has played (these wins were against Lichtenstein). The country will not be at FIFA 2026, as it has not yet won a single game out of the 169 qualification games it has played for either a World Cup or European Championship. San Marino only has one traffic light and the car licence plates only bear the national flag and the coat of arms.
GIBRALTAR
Aircraft Code: ZD
Location: Southern tip of Iberian Peninsular
Constitutional status: British Overseas Territory
Population: 40,587
Official languages: English; Spanish widely spoken alongside the local dialect Llanito
Area: One third of Washington DC
History: Gibraltar is one of the Pillars of Hercules that marked the edge of the ancient world. It was named after Jebel Tariq, the Moor general, who led the Muslim invasion of Spain in 711 AD. Spain regained control under Queen Isabella I in 1503. British and Dutch forces took Gibraltar in 1704 during the war of Spanish succession. Gibraltar was ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
Talking points: The Rock of Gibraltar is the last place in Europe to still have Old World monkeys living in the wild (40,000 years ago, monkeys were common on the Continent). There are more than 50km (31 miles) of tunnels dug into the rock, they include a lake and even a performance auditorium. John Lennon and Yoko Ono married on the Rock in 1969.
