Aviation Consultants Inc. operating as ACI Jet is a privately owned

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

services company based in

San Luis Obispo, California San Luis Obispo (; Spanish for " St. Louis the Bishop", ; Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located on the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfwa ...

. It was founded in 1998 by William Borgsmiller.

History

ACI Jet was founded in 1998 as an air charter company with a single light aircraft, the

twin-engine A twinjet or twin-engine jet is a jet aircraft powered by two engines. A twinjet is able to fly well enough to land with a single working engine, making it safer than a single-engine aircraft in the event of failure of an engine. Fuel efficien ...

Piper Seneca III. In 2002, ACI Jet added their first light jet to the fleet; a

Cessna Citation CJ2 The Cessna CitationJet/CJ/M2 (also known as the Model 525) are a series of light business jets built by Cessna, and are part of the Citation family. Launched in October 1989, the first flight of the Model 525 was on April 29, 1991. Federal Avi ...

. As of 2020, ACI Jet had 11 private jet aircraft. In August 2014, private investor and French investor

Olivier Leclercq Olivier Leclercq (born 1964) is a French billionaire businessman. He is a hotelier, designer, and owner of Olivarius Hotels, a private equity investor in California, and a Montecito, California real estate investor and developer. In 2014, magazin ...

invested an undisclosed sum in ACI Jet, providing staff and operations expansion. Leclercq's funds contributed directly to ACI Jet's Employee Flight Department, a service that allows employees to access the fleet's light aircraft. In September 2017, ACI Jet acquired a facility at

John Wayne Airport John Wayne Airport is a commercial and general aviation airport that serves Orange County, California, and the Greater Los Angeles area. The airport is located in an unincorporated area of Orange County, and it is owned and operated by the cou ...

Santa Ana, California Santa Ana () is the second most populous city and the county seat of Orange County, California. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census, making Santa Ana the List of ...

(SNA), through an

RFQ A Request for Quote (RfQ) is a financial term for certain way to ask a bank for an offer of a given financial instrument from a bank, made available by so-called Approved Publication Arrangement (APA) by the stock markets itself or by Financial ...

award. Their headquarters at the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport was expanded and was expected to be completed in early 2019. In February 2018, Leclercq purchased three new aircraft for the fleet: two Bombardier Globals and an

Embraer Phenom 300 The Embraer EMB-505 Phenom 300 is a single-pilot-certified light business jet developed by the Brazilian aerospace manufacturer Embraer. It can carry up to 11 occupants. Development Embraer began designing the Phenom 300 after finding that pot ...

, focusing on additional international travel. ACI Jet had plans to finalize a new facility in March 2020, adding 30,000 sq. ft. of MRO hangar space and 36,000 sq. ft. of office space. The additional space was intended to support the expansion of the business' flight-operations services. In October 2022, ACI completed the acquisition of the Van Nuys Airport-based aircraft maintenance operation.

References

{{reflist 1998 establishments in California Companies based in San Luis Obispo County, California