Corporate Use on Rise at Camarillo Airport

Housing sales and unemployment rates may be common economic indicators. But at the Camarillo Airport, the amount of corporate travel is significant.

And over the past few years, the signs have been positive.

“In general, the economy is as good as it’s been since World War II, and when companies do real well, they have a need to travel and have the means to travel in an efficient manner,” said Mark Oberman, general manager of Channel Islands Aviation, a provider of corporate airplane service at the airport. “People tend to look at corporate travel as an extravagance, but it’s actually a corporate tool, like a Xerox machine or a fax machine.”

Channel Islands Aviation and the two other firms supplying corporate travel service at the airport--Western Cardinal and Sun Air Aviation--all are working to keep up with increased demand.

Oberman, whose company has been at the airport since it opened 22 years ago, is working on a time-share plan that would allow local businesses to share ownership of corporate jets.

“We’ve been handling corporate aviation for a long, long time,” Oberman said. “We’re seeing corporate aviation in Ventura on the increase, and transient business has been fairly brisk. There’s a record number of corporate jets being sold right now, and one of the main underlying factors is fractional ownership.”

The aviation company would manage the program, maintain the aircraft and provide the corporate accommodations.

“We finished a remodeling of our facility a little over a year ago aimed at corporate aviation,” Oberman said. “We have the amenities--a pilot’s lounge, an upgraded computerized weather system, catering. We put that in place over a year ago and we get several jets and turboprops on a daily basis. Before that, we were not really geared to cater to the corporate client. We were more of a smaller-airplane facility.”

As Channel Islands Aviation develops its corporate service, Western Cardinal also is expanding its service to accommodate an increase in business.

“One of the big things we do is provide support and service to corporate airplanes when they come to Camarillo,” said owner Larry Oyers, who began operations in 1980. “In the last five years, that business has really expanded. As we’ve seen growth in the western San Fernando Valley, folks who used to go to Van Nuys are seeing that it’s much easier to go to the Camarillo or Oxnard airports.”

Oyers said he expects to finish construction by the end of the year on an 80-by-200-foot hangar, which would accommodate six to eight corporate airplanes.

“I’ve been hearing since 1978 that this place is getting ready to take off and that it has evolved,” Oyers said. “If you went to Van Nuys, you would probably see six [corporate] operators out there. There probably will be nowhere that kind of need in Camarillo, but there is a need for limited corporate service.”

The Western Cardinal and Channel Islands Aviation improvements are in addition to the 20,000-square-foot executive terminal proposed by Sun Air Aviation.

Plans for the facility, approved recently by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, would include a hangar, an office building and a parking structure. It is planned for completion by mid-2000.

“There’s absolutely competition here,” Oyers said. “There’s limited business. You find more competition than you would in Van Nuys--in Van Nuys they’ve got planes falling out of the sky. We spend thousands of dollars a year to attract [corporations] to our business.”