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Million Air breaks ground at Charleston International
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
An upscale provider of private aviation services is coming to Charleston International Airport, and according to Sam Hoerter, the airport’s director, it couldn’t come soon enough for well-heeled business travelers.
“The fact is, as of this moment, if Donald Trump wanted to fly in and park his business jet in a hangar, the answer would be ‘no,’” Hoerter said before a brief ground-breaking ceremony for Million Air’s new $5 million complex next to Corporate Wings on South Aviation Avenue.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that, except for a brief period in the 1990s, Charleston International has had only one fixed-based operation to serve the business traveler or wealthy resident of the Lowcountry,” Hoerter said.
“While Corporate Wings has done a wonderful job serving its clientele, the reality is its hangars are full. As a result, I understand anecdotally many corporate visitors keep their aircraft in Columbia or Augusta, Ga., and send for them whenever they need to fly.”
The new facility, which is expected to open in about five months, will include a passenger terminal and a hangar roomy enough to accommodate 10 corporate jets.
Company officials said they anticipate hiring 25 to 30 employees for positions ranging from line service to maintenance personnel to customer service representatives.
Among its amenities will be meeting rooms and offices for business travelers, what the company bills as a “technologically advanced conference room,” an atrium lobby with two flat-screen televisions, a Wild Bean Coffee bar and wireless Internet services throughout. The operator will also have Hertz rental cars available onsite and provide its customers with Jaguar crew vehicles.
Million Air currently delivers general aviation through a chain of 31 separate franchises strategically located across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Ken Allison, president of Million Air Cincinnati, said the company had been considering Charleston, as well as Nashville, Tenn., and Phoenix, as potential sites for expansion when the Charleston County Airport Authority put out a request for proposals for the vacant airport land two years ago.
“By then we knew that Charleston offered everything we were looking for in terms of the amount of corporate traffic coming into the city, potential customers and demographics,” Allison said. “On top of that, we just really love this city.”
Given the pent-up demand for a second fixed-based operation at the airport, Hoerter said he would be surprised if Million Air wasn’t completely full within two years of its grand opening.
“The last study we did showed that 5 percent of our daily traffic at Charleston International currently comes out of Corporate Wings,” he said.
The reason is that people who can afford to are opting to fly a private jet rather than purchase a first-class ticket, Hoerter said.
“Twenty years ago, we weren’t seeing that,” he said.
A fixed-based operation is essentially a refueling facility that offers a variety of other aviation-related services. The new Charleston facility will provide these services and fuel sales to pilots 24 hours a day.
The Cincinnati-based group that will own and operate Million Air Charleston also operates six other locations: Asheville, N.C.; Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Chicago; Lafayette and New Orleans, La.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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