According
to a news release issued by the airport, Signature Flight
Support will be awarded a 50-year lease on the airport’s
West Side “to develop and operate a 29-acre, $82 million facility, in which
they will manage, most notably, the personal aircraft of the principals at
Google, among other clients.”
The issue of where to park your planes is certainly
an important one; however, many of us only have to deal with where to park our cars.
The combined fleet of Page, Brin, and executive chairman Eric
Schmidt is estimated at around 8 jets, not including Google’s corporate fleet.
The planes are currently housed at Moffett Federal
Airfield in Mountain View, which is spitting distance from
Google’s headquarters.
However, last year
Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley made a fuss claiming
that this situation wasn’t fair and Google was getting the sweet end of the
deal. As Boeings can’t just be locked up on the street or tucked away in a
garage, an alternative location was needed.
What’s a billionaire to do? How sad it is to be in that type of predicament...
In this case, the answer is to build your own
airport, complete with an executive terminal, hangars, aircraft and car
parking, office space, and retail shops. This deal represents a significant
boost to the struggling San Jose airport. Mineta recently went through a $1.4
billion renovation and can use the additional revenue. Mayor Chuck Reed is
quoted in a Mercury
News article as saying he is “excited” because “each
of those airplanes is a property tax generator.” Furthermore, the airport will
bring in rent and other fees that amount to at least $3 million a year.
A committee comprised of city and airport officials
and real estate and airline executives chose Signature Flight Support’s
proposal for the project because of the British firm’s financial stability. It
cites itself as the world’s largest operator of ‘fixed base’
airports and has private air facilities in 113 locations, including San
Francisco, Chicago O’Hare and Boston Logan international airports. Director of
aviation Bill Sherry said that the company is committed to ”the private
aviation needs of local high-tech companies, most notably the personal aircraft
of the principals at Google.”
Google could be the first of many major clients to
store their aircraft in San Jose. Executives at international businesses often
travel extensively for work and don’t want to drive all the way to San
Francisco International Airport, which is about 10 minutes further away from
Mountain View than Mineta. Time is money, after all.
Really, it is a win-win situation. Google executives
have a safe, friendly, personal place to store their airplanes, without having
to interact with regular people or the federal government. For San Jose, the
project creates hundreds of new jobs and bolsters its local budget.
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