JetSuite To Leave LGB for Orange County Customers

Alex Wilcox is planning on moving his JetSuite company from Long Beach Airport to John Wayne Airport. According to Wilcox, the company will remain in the southland in the short term but is looking at moving the company out to California later on. He also says that the company is growing at record pace and they have doubled the fleet from six to twelve airplanes.

When Wilcox was asked if there was anything that the airport could do to help his business, Wilcox said that LGB does not seem interested in supporting or helping JetSuite. JetSuite had asked the airport for a billboard on the 405 but was told it was not of interest for the airport. "I shouldn't come off as sour or bitter about Long Beach" Wilcox said. "It's just the fact that Orange County is where our clients are, and that's a main reason we're moving. But the airport was not very supportive of our business at all and that was sort of unfortunate. But if that's the way it is, so be it."

Most of the 70 full time exployees are expected to move with the company.

Long Beach Based JetSuite Has Accident in Arizona

I am posting this since JetSuite is a LGB based company. It's sad to see something like this happen.

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SEDONA, Ariz. – Max McIntyre and his friend were hiking up Cathedral Rock just south of the Sedona Airport when they saw a plane fly in for a landing at about 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Max McIntyre describes what happened next. "The airplane did a turn and came down and landed. I started talking to my friend Wood who was up the mountain a little higher and, all of a sudden, I look and I see the plane tumbling off the side of the runway and it stops a couple of hundred feet from the end of the runway."

The plane was flying in from San Jose, California with two crew members and three passengers onboard. No one was injured.

However, several people were rushed to the hospital as a precautionary measure.

The plane belongs to JetSuite, a new airline out of California that charters exclusively Phenom 100's. They have 12 planes in their fleet and have numerous daily flights all over the southwest.

Alex Wilcox, CEO for JetSuite, says, "For whatever reason, they did not slow the airplane down enough to exit or taxi as normal, and they went off the end of the runway."

According to their CEO they have never had an incident like this before, and they are sending a crew to the wreckage site for a thorough investigation.

Wilcox says, "We are sending two technicians tonight to Sedona to investigate tomorrow in daylight along with the NTSB and the FAA."

It’s unclear why the plane overran the runway or if the crash was human -caused or a mechanical issue.

Wilcox says, "The captain is a very experienced guy. He's got over 24,000 hours of total time and over 500 hours on this particular airplane."

The Phenom 100 has an estimated cost of $3.6 million.

(By Tyler Baldwin - azfamily.com)