After spending much of its first two decades with a different name and a more local mission, Lenexa, Kansas-based Airshare is coming to the East Coast, launching its days-based fractional ownership and jet card programs in Florida. President & CEO John Owen says the private aviation flight provider is merely following its customers. Currently, one in seven Airshare flights is to or from Florida.
It should also be helpful for its most notable customer, Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, an ambassador for the flight provider. His Kansas City Chiefs are scheduled to play at the Jacksonville Jaguars this Fall and Miami is where he won his first of two league championships.
While larger competitors like NetJets and Flexjet solicit customers nationally, Airshare takes a regional approach, despite ranking as the ninth-largest operator in the U.S. based on fractional and charter flight hours.
Its program is structured so to avoid repositioning charges, its jet card and fractional clients have to be flying to or from airports within 120 nautical of Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Wichita, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis and Buffalo. That footprint includes the likes of Cincinnati, Louisville, Milwaukee and Toronto, Canada.
The new Florida zone will run from Jacksonville in the Northeast to Orlando, over to Tampa, and cover the entirety of southern Florida from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. It includes five of the 21 busiest private jet airports in the country.
For current customers, it means as of today; they will no longer have to pay for repositioning on flights from Florida to places like New York, Washington D.C., Boston, the Caribbean, or Mexico. For the company, it marks another step in Airshare’s ambitions to be a nationwide player.
