Gary Standel caught the California bug when he was 17. Then he got hooked on aviation.
Today, Standel owns Santa Ana-based West Coast Charters Inc. and an aircraft maintenance business operating near John Wayne Airport and the Long Beach Airport.
Standel was among the honorees at last week’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards luncheon put on by the Business Journal.
After vacationing in California in the 1970s, Standel decided he liked Orange County and moved from Michigan.
In the late 1970s he got his start in aviation, getting his pilot’s license and attending Orange Coast College’s aviation program.
“I paid my way through school washing and fueling airplanes part-time at John Wayne Airport for a local charter company,” he said. “I worked there for a few years and kept obtaining ratings and meeting with aircraft owners and local business owners.”
By the time he finished school, Standel had earned aviation ratings in instruments, commercial flight, flying instructor and multi-engine disciplines.
His work with the charter company also got him hours as a co-pilot.
In 1985 Standel went to work as a captain for some local real estate developers, flying the King Air turboprop plane they owned. He earned a charter certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration while working for that company.
“We chartered that airplane out to their friends and local business colleagues,” Standel said.
When the owners of the company sold it in 1987, Standel jumped in, leasing the King Air. West Coast Charters was born.
“There weren’t a lot of costs to entry,” Standel said. “It was just a matter of having a phone and leasing the aircraft. I piloted all the flights.”
In 1989 Standel added the first jet aircraft to the fleet,a Citation V. By the early 1990s he was operating 10 planes and started an in-house maintenance department.
Today West Coast Charters operates 15 turboprop planes and 15 jets. It has 60 employees. The company has 50,000 square feet of maintenance facilities in Santa Ana and Long Beach.
Although Standel wouldn’t name clients, he said many are real estate developers. Most are OC companies.
The flights typically are to U.S. destinations, though West Coast Charters flies to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
“Our client list includes a temporary employment agency, a banking business and construction companies,” he said. “We’ve had clients from Hollywood, too,families taking personal vacations.”
West Coast Charters also brokers “fractional ownership” sales. Under the fractional model, buyers can acquire as little as one-eighth of a King Air B200 and pay fixed monthly management fees. West Coast Charters handles management responsibilities for the fractional ownership planes.
Standel lives in Newport Beach with his wife, Marybeth. The couple have two sons, ages 8 and 18.
Standel’s hobbies include skiing, snowboarding, golf, hanging out with his family and traveling. Standel recently traveled to Vietnam.
