Founded

2005

Headquarters

Hawthorne, California

Key People

Levi Stockton, president

Number of Employees

120

Phone Number

(310) 644-3344

Website

Advanced Air

Advanced Air

Until a few years after the turn of the millennium, Jack Northrop Field/Hawthorne Airport was an unremarkable facility, known mostly for the fact that famed aeronautical engineer Jack Northrop had built and tested radical flying wings from an adjacent factory. 

The airport could have gone the way of many an urban flying field, neglected to the point where local non-air-minded citizens pushed for its closure. However, the mayor and city leadership partnered with entrepreneurial pilot Levi Stockton and a group of investors to rescue Hawthorne Airport. Today it is a thriving facility, home to Stockton’s Advanced Air charter/management operation and Jet Center Los Angeles FBO. (Also at the airport are SpaceX, which occupies the former Northrop-Grumman buildings and—hidden behind closed hangar doors—nascent urban air mobility start-ups.)

Since founding Advanced Air in 2005, Stockton and his team have built the company into a major player in the air charter, aircraft management, and FBO business. Advanced Air ranks in the top 20 for flight hours logged in the Argus International annual listing of charter operators. The company’s 23-aircraft fleet ranges from single-engine Pilatus PC-12 turboprops to twin-engine King Airs and midsize Challenger 350s, and it also operates two Dornier 328 turboprop airliners for Taos Air. The PC-12s fly under the Surf Air banner. Stockton, who got his start in the aviation business as a flight instructor and cargo pilot, still flies some of the airplanes in the Advanced Air fleet.

Advanced Air’s Jet Center Los Angeles is a modern FBO with an unusual twist: it’s adjacent to a real restaurant, the Tasting Kitchen, part of the Eureka! Restaurants family. The eatery replaced a favorite greasy spoon diner, and while pilots who used to fly to Hawthorne miss the old Nat’s Airport Cafe, today visitors can enjoy a locally brewed beer, gourmet burgers, and freshly tossed salads while watching airplanes take off and land. After a meal, they can take a short walk south on Crenshaw Boulevard to see a used SpaceX rocket booster—the first ever recovered—posing on its massive landing legs and perfectly positioned for a space-age selfie.

Since its founding, Advanced Air has built more than 200,000 square feet of hangar space at Hawthorne, which is now thriving. While in past years pilots shunned the facility because it wasn’t as glitzy as the traditional Los Angeles airports, it is now just a stone’s throw away from the new SoFI Stadium. It is also much more centrally located to L.A. doings than crowded Van Nuys or John Wayne/Orange County and far less expensive to operate from than nearby LAX. Many travelers who used to fly into Santa Monica had to forego its convenience after the city cut the runway short to try to keep out large jets, and in any case, Santa Monica is scheduled to close at the end of 2028. Hawthorne, still well supported by the city, clearly has a future as a business aviation airport, so Advanced Air seems well located.