Sunset Aviation resurrected in wake of JetDirect bankruptcy

PETALUMA, March 12, 2009 – Charter aircraft provider Sunset Aviation of Petaluma has restructured and is operating under a new company in the wake of a bankruptcy filing of parent JetDirect.

National air charter service JetDirect furloughed all Sunset Aviation Inc. employees March 2 before filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection March 6.

The restructuring of Sunset by Dan Drohan, founder, president and chief executive officer, resulted in the formation of Sunset Aviation LLC. On March 2, after Gregory Campbell, chairman of JetDirect Aviation Holdings LLC, announced all employees of Sunset Aviation Inc. were on furlough, the newly formed LLC offered all but 10 percent of the employees their jobs back.

Sunset Aviation Inc., which offers storage, maintenance and charter service of light jets, was sold to Burlingame-based JetDirect in May of 2007 by Mr. Drohan. Mr. Drohan founded the company at age 20 and ran it for 17 years. He remained with the company after the purchase, serving as vice president of aircraft management, president and then CEO.

In October of last year, JetDirect announced its intent to make Sunset Aviation Inc. its light jet and turboprop management and charter operating subsidiary with its primary geographic focus in California.

In a press release at the time, Mr. Campbell said, “Today Sunset is an established leader in that industry segment. We will leverage Sunset’s experience and expertise managing and operating more than 35 turboprop, light jet and VLJs under its air carrier certificate.”

However, due to the economy, JetDirect was unable to maintain its operations with Sunset. Assets were secured by Sovereign Bank, and all employees were notified any wages or expense obligations owed to them would be treated as an unsecured creditor obligation of the bankruptcy estate.

With local operations in Novato, Santa Rosa, Napa, Concord, Hayward, San Francisco and Sacramento as well as five other states, the new Sunset plans to continue its charter flight service and has plans to rebrand the company in the coming months.

Mr. Drohan will serve as president and CEO while industry veterans Jake Cartwright, John King and Greg Petersen will join as senior management. Former JetDirect senior executives Mark Spindler, Dave Weil and Marla McGatlin will join the management team as well.

Mr. Drohan expressed unease at the inability to hire all former Sunset Aviation Inc. employees.

“In the 17 years we had been in business,” said Mr. Drohan, “we never laid off a single employee.”

“The 10 percent was in maintenance, line service and flight ops,” said Mr. Drohan. “The fleet has gotten newer and newer, and more and more of the jets are under warranty.” This, he said, meant they had to charter out a lot of the maintenance work anyway.

Sunset has more than 80 employees, 40 of whom are pilots, and the rest are administration in the Petaluma office.

“We are really pleased to be moving forward with this new venture,” said Mr. Drohan. “We are very optimistic about the future for the new Sunset, and we have planned for, and anticipate, strong growth in the coming months despite the challenging economic environment.

“It has been an interesting journey, to say the least,” he added.