Charter air service is finding friendly skies over Orange County, where demand for private flights has gained altitude in recent months.
It’s a largely overlooked but significant aspect of operations at John Wayne Airport. Charter service accounts for a sliver of revenue and passengers compared to the facility’s commercial service—but the recent surge offers confirmation that spending on executive travel continues to grow in the wake of the recent recession, when many a corner office got their wings clipped.
“The last 18 months have seen a big boom,” said Kurt Belcher, president of STAjets Inc., which operates 19 planes for charter from its base at JWA.
“We flew to 750 cities last year,” adds Alex Wilcox, chief executive of JetSuite Inc., from its headquarters across the street from the airport.
Business “has improved on all fronts,” said Gary Standel, founder and owner of Santa Ana-based West Coast Aviation Services.
The three companies are part of a buzzing hub of what’s known as “general aviation” at the airport—small aircraft that range from individually owned single-engine turboprops to chartered jets. JWA houses 449 general aviation aircraft, said spokesperson Jenny Wedge: 386 single-and multiengine airplanes, 52 jets and 11 helicopters.
Scott Hagen, deputy airport director for operations, said about 90 spaces for small planes are available at the airport and that 10 companies overall—based here or elsewhere—provide charter service.
The category brought the airport $4.1 million in revenue in fiscal year 2013-2014, about 3.5% of its total for the year. There’s been a one-third hike in general aviation revenue since 2007, and the annual gains have been steady, even during the recession.
The charter services and individual owners also fuel a host of service providers that offer everything from catering to nose-to-tail paint jobs.
Trio
STAjets, JetSuite, and West Coast Aviation combined to fly about 14,000 charter passengers through JWA last year. Collectively, they own, manage, or lease 70 aircraft, more than half of which are kept here at two fixed-base operators—aircraft service and support facilities on John Wayne land—Atlantic Aviation and Signature Flight Support.
Standel founded West Coast in 1985 after starting out washing planes at the airport and earning his pilot’s license. Now it “does a little of everything,” he said: owning, leasing, and managing aircraft, including individual planes with multiple owners; aircraft maintenance; and brokering sales, including West Coast craft.
“Two of the three planes we own right now are for sale,” he said. “I buy ’em, fix ’em up, and sell ’em.”
The company is the western U.S. dealer for a small Australian-made aircraft used for surveillance by law enforcement and the Southern California service center for the planes of Wichita, Kan.-based Beechcraft Corp.
The company did about $40 million in sales last year, Standel said.
It has 85 employees, including 40 pilots—one of whom is Standel’s son.
His planes hold six to 12 passengers and fly mainly “west of the Rockies,” though the larger craft can go worldwide.
Standel said about 75% of the company’s business comes from Orange County.
“We’ve always been here,” he said.
Floating
JetSuite’s MacArthur Boulevard offices house about 100 employees and feature two large TV-screen walls that show schedules and jets in flight.
About 100 company pilots log 19,000 hours annually on 19 jets—11 four-passenger models and eight that seat up to seven—with each aircraft averaging three hours daily in the air.
It owns its planes “so we don’t have to rely on others,” Wilcox said.
Its jets fly within North America and cost $4 million to $8 million. Clients pay $3,000 to $6,000 an hour for the charter, depending on jet size.
The company booked $65 million in revenue last year.
It flew about 2,000 passengers on 1,200 flights from Atlantic Aviation facilities at John Wayne. That accounts for 7% of JetSuite’s overall business.
It’s a “floating fleet,” meaning jets stay where they land until they’re needed or when they’re flown empty to another location in a logistical shift called “positioning.” JetSuite will sometimes offers flights starting at about $500 to its 55,000 Facebook fans to get some revenue from a positioning flight.
Wilcox cofounded the company in 2006 with Keith Rabin and Brian Coulter after he worked at JetBlue Airways Corp. and helped launch an airline in India called Kingfisher.
Famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan paid $20 for JetSuite’s first flight—the Andrew Jackson is framed on Wilcox’s wall.
JetSuite investors include Zappos.com Chief Executive Tony Hsieh, JetBlue founder David Neeleman, and private equity investor Art Sandberg.
Eastern Seaboard
STAjets is on Campus Drive and flies out of Signature’s fixed-base operations. It has 19 planes for charter, 14 of which are managed for their owners and five of which are leased.
The company also manages two other planes that aren’t available to customers.
Many of its aircraft are large enough to fly worldwide. Planes in its fleet seat six to 14 passengers each and would retail for $5 million to $20 million, according to the company.
“A lot of our business is from the entertainment industry and other celebrities,” Belcher said.
It costs $1,500 to $5,800 per hour, per jet to fly STAjets, the company said.
About a dozen planes are kept at John Wayne, with one each in Van Nuys and Palm Springs, plus four on the East Coast—three in Miami and one in New York—where STAjets is expanding.
“New York is the gateway to Europe,” Belcher said. “And the New York-Florida corridor is a big market.”
He grew up in Orange County and around planes—earning an aeronautical degree, working as a pilot and flight instructor, and running Encore Jet, a fixed-base operator in Chino, before buying the 7-year-old STAjets in 2009.
It had one aircraft at the time and seven a year later.
He said it was hard to keep track of current growth, “because we keep doubling.”
“Everything is vertical” on financial reports, Belcher said. “Our value is insane on paper.”
The company declined to offer revenue figures.
Newport Beach-based Revolution Avia-tion plans to be the fourth local company to offer charter service.
The flight school certifies pilots under one part of Federal Aviation Administration rules—“Part 61”—and is “in process for Part 135,” owner Mark Robinson said.
The company operates nine aircraft: two planes, six helicopters and a drone.
The first two kinds of craft will be for charter, while the drone is often used for such things as real estate mapping; the Irvine Company is a client, he said.
Robinson himself is at the controls for much of Revolution’s flight time.
‘Like A Taxi’
General aviation “is like a taxi,” he said, and current operators concur.
“People buy an airplane for the convenience,” Standel said. “But that’s as far as they know. They need us to manage it so they can say, ‘Hey, I need to go here next Tuesday,’ and we take care of everything. We maintain the value of their asset.”
