Founded

1999

Headquarters

Janesville, Wisconsin

Key People

Bob Erb, president, Colony Brands, Inc.

Number of Employees

82

Phone Number

(866) 290-9999

Website

SC Aviation

SC Aviation

Formerly the corporate flight department for gourmet food mail order business The Swiss Colony, SC Aviation provides aircraft management, acquisition, and charter services from bases throughout the Midwest and business jet maintenance at its FAA Part 145 repair station in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Twenty years after Ray Kubly founded The Swiss Colony in Monroe, Wisconsin, to sell cheese by mail order, he purchased the company’s first aircraft, a Cessna 140, in 1946 to reduce his travel time to meetings in Chicago and Green Bay. Three years later, he replaced the 140 with a five-passenger Cessna 195 and hired a pilot. Shortly before Kubly’s death in 1968, the company replaced the single-engine airplane with a twin-engine Cessna 310; then it upgraded to a Cessna 414 in 1972. 

By 1986, company executives needed longer-range aircraft; The Swiss Colony purchased a Cessna Citation II and moved flight operations from Monroe to the larger Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport near Janesville. With a few more aircraft changes, by 1992 the flight department consisted of a Saberliner 60 and the Cessna 414.

The flight department began to offer the Sabreliner for outside charter in 1993 to offset expenses. Shortly thereafter, the company purchased a longer-range Hawker 700, establishing a supplemental Chicago-based operation in 1996 and staffing the Hawker for 24/7 availability. A King Air 200 replaced the aging twin Cessna in 1998.  

Capitalizing on the increasing success of its charter operation, The Swiss Colony spun off its flight department to form SC Aviation, Inc., in 1999 with department manager/chief pilot Ernie Grainger serving as the company’s first president. After receiving its FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate, SC Aviation began providing aircraft management and acquisition services in addition to air charter.

In 2010 its parent company renamed itself Colony Brands to better reflect its diversified business, which includes 10 e-commerce catalog brands, a marketing consulting company, and the air charter company.

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) recognized SC Aviation for 67 years of safe flight operations in 2013. By then, the company’s fleet had grown to include four Hawkers and two Lears, and it had earned the Wyvern Wingman safety rating.  

SC Aviation opened a 36,000-square-foot maintenance facility—large enough to house a Gulfstream G650 or Bombardier Global 6000—at its Janesville campus in 2016. It also began stocking several million dollars’ worth of parts for Hawker, Citation, Learjet, and Falcon airframes, establishing a parts sourcing and overnight delivery service.