Illinois air charter DB Aviation offers service out of Napa

<p>NAPA – DB Aviation, a charter service headquartered in Illinois, is expanding operations in the Northern California market with service out of Napa, San Jose, Monterey and Davis.</p><p> “We have been studying the area for about three years,” said Andy Schweickert, the marketing director of the 22-year-old company. “What we found was that it was underserved in terms of capacity from the number of aircraft and from a service standpoint, so we began recruiting aircraft.”</p><p>The expansion was made gradually over the course of several months and is now officially up and running.</p><p>“Northern California is a very attractive area for us,” he added. The charter service is planning to expand the locally based fleet from three jets to 15 in the next three years.</p><p>The clientele is comprised of business travelers and personal travelers, with approximately 50 percent of each. Mr. Schweickert cited the major advantage of private aviation as being the number of airports it can get in to. “It is about the final destination,” he said.</p><p>Of the more than 5,000 airports nationwide, 90 percent of them are not accessible by commercial airlines. There are several other charter flight services, with Sunset Aviation in Sonoma County being the largest.</p><p>Meanwhile, Horizon Air, a commercial airline flying out of the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, has increased traffic by 87 percent. That compares to the 4.8 percent increase at San Francisco International Airport, 8.9 percent drop at San Jose and a 21.6 percent drop in Oakland.</p><p>Outside of the Illinois area, DB Aviation has aircraft located in Minnesota, Texas, Indiana and Wisconsin. It was named one of the “50 fastest-growing companies in Chicago” by Crane’s Business Journal.</p>