BY PEPPER FISHER
Port Angeles – The news is out that there is a new airline company in Port Angeles, but it’s not going to be the kind of shuttle service that Dash Air tried to set up for the typical traveler to SeaTac airport.
Kelly Kidwell is the owner of Citizen Air, which recently acquired Rite Brothers Aviation of Port Angeles, based at Fairchild Airport. Kidwell pitched a whole new business model at this week’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon, called fractional ownership. He’s offering any person or business with enough money the opportunity to become a part owner of a private plane or jet in exchange for having access to any of the aircraft the company owns.
The minimum percentage of the buy-in is a one-sixteenth share of an aircraft. One of the aircraft the company intends to purchase a Cirrus Vision very light jet (VLJ), with a purchase price of about $3 million. One sixteenth of that would be around $187,000. But that cost, as Kidwell explained, is just the beginning.
“So they have to have no less than 1/16 of that aircraft, and there must be two owners in every one of these aircraft, and they must have multi-year contracts to support all the services necessary to keep those fractional jets flying safely in an orderly way. All of them are paid for by all the owners of the jets, who pay for full-time pilots, but just their share. Full-time dispatch, but just their share. And insurance, and hangers, and all the things that make piloting very expensive, if you’re going to do it that way.”
Rite Brothers will act as the management company, handling the details of each flight. Full-time pilots will be employees of the company, and are currently being hired.
Somewhere down the line, Citizen Air’s business model includes offering scheduled flights to everyday travelers. He said it will take some time to get the business profitable or even flat, but when they do it, they will do it right.
“I’ve heard the request that keeps coming up from the community around, “When can we have scheduled service?” I know that there’s been a lot of, boy, history on this subject. Is that fair? And what I didn’t want to do is send any kind of expectation, and exactly when it will happen. But I want to be clear with you that I see the importance of it. We are focused on it, and we’ll pull every available thread on making sure we do it in a responsible way. But if we do bring scheduled here, what want to bring is a durable solution, not something that you get to have for a while and then it goes away.”
The fractional airline business model is not new. Kidwell said there are similar operations in Utah and in Nevada, but none in Washington state, which he says is ripe for growth throughout Puget Sound region.
What is new about the Citizen Air model is the plan to eventually add scheduled flights for non-partners. Kidwell said they are still working how it would work, but says it would involve being a part of a membership. Members would likely be notified when a flight had empty seats available. Prices are not yet being discussed.
Staff photo: Kelly Kidwell (left) and Chamber Director Marc Abshire.