In the late 1970s, Burgess broke into the Springfield aviation industry, and since mid-2007, he’s run OzAir Charter Service through Burgess Aircraft Management LLC.
The company employs 13 – 10 of whom are pilots – and has nine jets in the inventory it manages at the Springfield airport.
Getting clients from point A to point B when they want to go, Burgess Aircraft Management recorded $3.6 million in 2013 revenue, a three-year growth rate of 48.5 percent. Burgess says in a typical week, crews make 10 to 15 trips for clients.
The aircraft are owned by clients – except for Burgess Aircraft’s minority interest in two planes – and the company leases them for charter operations. “If they need to use it, then we can provide services for them to fly it,” he says of the management leases with jet owners, who get maintenance and hangar storage in the deals.
Burgess Aircraft also provides services to brokers and shares jet operators outside of the area. Burgess says the company regularly works with 15 to 20 brokers bidding for trips.
“Most of those operations spun down quite a ways when the economy tanked. They’re getting a little bit busier, too, like we are,” Burgess says, adding the “lift” it gives represents 15 to 20 percent of OzAir’s business.
The company works with other charter brokers through their website or their own customer base. He says some are simply brokering flights and reselling trips through Burgess Aircraft, while others have charter cards or fractional ownership programs at play.
In fractional share, or membership, programs, multiple individuals have a percentage of ownership and therefore share in the flight schedules. The charter, or jet, cards allow users to buy blocks of flight hours.
Other times, the brokers are asking his firm to assist when mechanical problems or overbooked schedules arise. Burgess Aircraft also has been known to be on call when human organs need transplanted to donor organizations in Kansas City and St. Louis.
“That’s one good thing about being in Springfield. We’re right in the center of the country, and I can be on either coast in two and a half to three hours,” says Burgess.
Today, his work is mostly handled on the ground, but Burgess says he’s known to pilot a charter flight every now and then.
He declined to name clients, citing confidentiality agreements.
Burgess says the most exotic places clients booked flights last year were to Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Cancun was another recent stop, and already this year four trips were made to the Bahamas.
Through the company’s aircraft brokerage division, Burgess negotiated a nearly $1 million purchase of a King Air F9 last year for a client. With inventory growing, Burgess is preparing to invest $1 million in a second hangar. Another 15,000-square-foot shell building is in the works on a parcel Burgess leases from the city for 20 years at $4,600 a year. His plans dovetail with the city and state collaboration for new taxiways, aprons and ramps to serve expected new hangars.[[In-content Ad]]
