From flying and managing one Beechcraft King Air in 2005 to directing a fleet of 23 aircraft and the operations of the flourishing Hawthorne (California) Municipal Airport, Levi Stockton is skillfully navigating his career and the growth of a company he convinced four real estate investors to support when he was 23 years old.
The pilot-turned-entrepreneur is the founder and president of Advanced Air, LLC, which formed in 2005 and is now considered to be one of the fastest growing business aircraft operators in the country while operating among the largest managed aircraft fleets on the West Coast.
Jet Center by 30% on game days.
“The first full year after we got our charter certificate we flew 125 hours total, and today we probably fly at least that many hours on a holiday weekend,” Stockton said. “When we started, I quoted every trip and flew every trip single pilot; we really didn’t have any other employees. Now we have a team of 130 employees and 60 pilots, and every flight has a crew of two.”
Advanced Air owns or manages 23 aircraft and counting; in addition to seven King Air 350 models, the company’s roster includes Pilatus PC-12 single-engine turboprops, Learjet 75 light jets, Bombardier Challenger 300 nine-passenger jets and 30-passenger Dornier 328 regional jets.
The company’s services have grown from aircraft management and charter to also include corporate travel, supplying flight crews, property management services and, since 2015, regional commercial service through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Essential Air Service (EAS) program. EAS subsidizes a minimal level of scheduled air service in small communities that were served by certificated air carriers before airline deregulation.
While Stockton is no longer the chief pilot, he remains an active line pilot flying King Air 350 aircraft. He still considers the King Air to be the core of Advanced Air’s operations and representative of why the Los Angeles-based company’s business model works. Of Advanced Air’s roughly 10,000 hours flown in the past year, about 4,000 were flown in King Air aircraft, half scheduled service and half private charter. Having scheduled service in the mix, he said, allows the company to consistently fly a customer’s aircraft six hours a day versus six hours a week, if that’s their desire. That adaptability and scalability allows them to grow in different directions simultaneously or move in a new direction with an existing resource.
“The key to Advanced Air’s success has been taking the assets we have and finding opportunity with them,” Stockton said. “Our core has always been that we’re an aircraft management company that can offset owners’ costs with charter. Where historically charter has been hard to work around schedules, we now have the availability to take a King Air 350 and plug it into our scheduled service network, meet the owners’ budget and pull it back out and have it ready for them where they need it. This model allows us to increase utilization across the fleet in a very unique way.”
How it Started
Stockton knew from an early age that he wanted a career as a pilot. He grew up in Washington state with his mom and he and his sister often flew commercially to Alaska to visit their dad. As unaccompanied minors, they regularly were invited to visit the cockpit. His father purchased a Piper Pacer when Stockton was 12 years old, further fueling his interest in aviation.
His flight career started at Sierra Aeronautical Academy in the Bay Area right after he finished high school. After flight training, he worked as a flight instructor in the academy’s Air China and Korean Air training programs. He earned his first type rating at the age of 20, flying cargo in the Fairchild Metroliner SA227. He next moved to a regional airline on the East Coast and then in 2005, the 23-year-old Stockton accepted a job as captain of a King Air 350 owned by four real estate developers in Southern California.
Silver City, New Mexico.
He flew the airplane and coordinated with a local charter and management company that the owners were using to manage the King Air. His entrepreneurial spirit emerged quickly, though, and he wanted to do more than just fly the airplane.
“I reached out to my bosses, who are now my partners, and proposed starting our own charter company,” said Stockton, now 40. “The original response I got was no. So I said we can either start the company or consider this my letter of resignation and I’ll go fly for the airlines. They responded back, ‘Well, it looks like we’re starting a new charter company.’”
Advanced Air launched in 2005 and in November 2007 was issued a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate. As they started to grow their fleet of managed and owned aircraft, Stockton said they opted for a philosophy of operating at least three aircraft of the same make and model to improve efficiency and ensure safety.
“For years we only did on-demand charter and that’s still a huge piece of our business,” he said. “But as you grow, you build relationships and see opportunities.”
Among those opportunities was operating flights for app-based air travel membership services considered the “uber of private aviation,” including Surf Air and the former JetSmarter (acquired in 2019 by XOJet, now XO).
“Instead of flying an aircraft maybe six hours for a weekend golf trip, we could fly an airplane six hours a day or more with scheduled service,” Stockton said. “We were flying West Coast routes and it was adding up to about 40 hours of flying a week consistently. Having that kind of set amount of flying was interesting to us as a company because it allowed us to go and get more aircraft. We could sit in front of an aircraft owner and show them how much we could use their plane.”
That led to another big step for Advanced Air.
“We were limited to four and a half round trips per week between city pairings unless we got our Commuter Air Carrier authorization from the DOT,” he said. “So we went through that process and became a commuter airline, and now we can operate between city pairings as many times as we want.”
In addition to more work with Surf Air (a relationship since 2018) and Taos Air (since 2019), Advanced Air began bidding on EAS contracts. Their first win was Silver City, New Mexico, and they recently announced a second EAS contract for Merced in Northern California. The operations started Jan. 1 with 24 weekly roundtrip flights to LAX and 12 weekly roundtrip flights to Las Vegas.
“You look at different operators in the Essential Air Service world and for the most part they are using Cessna Caravans, Pilatus or in some cases regional size jets. We knew the King Air very well and felt this was a great opportunity to enter the EAS market with the King Air 350,” Stockton said. “It’s been three years now that we’ve had the Silver City contract and we do it solely with the King Air 350, flying from Silver City to Albuquerque and Phoenix. Our reliability has been 98%, so the King Air 350 has proven to be a great asset on these routes.”
In total, Advanced Air provides semi-private scheduled service in 12 regions – Arizona: Phoenix/PHX; California: Los Angeles Hawthorne/HHR, Mammoth/MMH, Carlsbad/CLD, Burbank/BUR, Merced/MCE, Thermal (Palm Springs)/TRM; New Mexico: Silver City/SVC, Albuquerque/ABQ, Taos/SKX; Texas: Austin/AUS, Dallas/DAL.
Advanced Air participates in the FAA’s Aviation Safety Action Program, employs a modern safety management system and operates all flights with two pilots who have had full crew resource management training.
Passengers flying on an Advanced Air managed aircraft get the same experience whether they are a charter customer or flying a semi-private scheduled flight, “which has brought a high-end product to Essential Air Service,” Stockton said.
For Advanced Air, the majority of the King Air 350’s operating ring is from LA over to Denver, then up to Vancouver and down to Cabo San Lucas.
“That half-circle is all nonstop in the 350 so it covers a huge area on the West Coast,” Stockton said. “There are a lot of mountainous areas, especially going into ski destinations, and a lot of people like a twin-engine for that. The King Air checks so many boxes, from going into short runways to having proven reliability. It will take eight people and all their luggage and gear pretty much anywhere you want to go in that half-circle.”
King Air aircraft in the fleet all have wing lockers, renewed interiors including center aisles outfitted with a dark, durable material, and updated paint, including a dark color behind the nacelle to help minimize the visibility of exhaust streaks.
Advanced Air is in the process of purchasing a third company-owned King Air 350 (they still own the original King Air 350 that launched the company and Stockton has about 2,000 hours in it). He said they look for aircraft with G1000 avionics or an aircraft that makes sense to upgrade to the G1000.
“The King Air 350 off the shelf pretty much covers everything you need,” Stockton said. “We’ve found that the sweet spot is looking for serial numbers around 560 and above; the air conditioning system has been upgraded and there is a quieter cabin with no maintenance issues around the sound dampening system.”
What’s Next
Adding a third corporate owned and eighth overall King Air to their fleet will help Advanced Air keep up with growing demand in both private charter and semi-private scheduled service. Stockton said they are seeing business returning to pre-COVID numbers and better, in some cases.
“It’s been fascinating to watch what’s happening,” Stockton said. “Airlines are coming back with higher prices and less frequency in certain areas. Business travel hasn’t yet scaled back up so it’ll be interesting to see when and how that comes back. Overall, we are seeing customers who now feel they can justify the price of chartering or customers who maybe didn’t realize this was an option and now they are hearing about private aviation and semi-private options and realizing it’s feasible and makes sense.”
In December, Stockton said the company is close to launching a program under the Advanced Airlines umbrella that will make it more accessible to book private and semi-private charter flights. Their program will use a proprietary algorithm to optimize the private flying experience. His vision is that you’ll be able to crowdfund to meet a minimum passenger number to make the charter cost-effective, buy empty seats or sell empty seats on platforms like Expedia and Travelocity.
“We’re rolling out a tool that will change how you search, book and save on your next charter flight,” he said.
Advanced Air’s home base is within its own FBO at Hawthorne Municipal Airport. Stockton oversees the Jet Center Los Angeles and is the managing partner of the many properties the Advanced Air partnership has at HHR, including the airport’s long-term property lease.
In recent years, they’ve recruited new tenants from Santa Monica Airport, scheduled to close at the end of 2028, and built more than 200,000 square feet of hangar space.
The transformation of what was once a sleepy airport with no new construction since the 1970s into what Stockton calls the Los Angeles area’s premier aviation destination will take center stage next month.
SoFi Stadium, home of the NFL’s LA Rams and LA Chargers, is hosting Super Bowl LVI scheduled for Feb. 13. The sports and entertainment complex that opened in fall 2020 in Inglewood is 2 miles from HHR and Stockton said it has increased flights at the Jet Center by 30% on game days.
Stockton said investments in facilities combined with the airport’s convenient location, 4,884-foot runway and lack of noise restrictions make it a popular option in the LA basin. He anticipates at least 100 airplanes coming in the weekend of the Super Bowl, with departures around the clock.
The airport and the Jet Center have been planning for a year for a safe event and will use the experience to help prepare for LA’s hosting of the 2028 Summer Olympics. Stockton is looking forward to showcasing the capabilities of the company his partners and team have grown over the past 17 years.
“Building Advanced Air into the aviation entity it is today has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life,” Stockton said. “What started as a pipedream has become more than I ever imagined. I can only see us continuing to soar from here.”