NC lawmakers again pledge money to help private jet company expand in eastern NC

Three years ago, state lawmakers gave $30 million to the N.C. Department of Transportation to build flight training and corporate offices in Eastern North Carolina for the charter jet company flyExclusive.

This month, lawmakers recommitted that money but with changes that flyExclusive’s founder and CEO Jim Segrave says were necessary to make the project work.

The state budget signed by Gov. Josh Stein transfers the $30 million to the state Department of Commerce to put toward a flight training and maintenance facility at the N.C. Global TransPark, the state-owned airport and business park in Kinston.

The budget requires flyExclusive to invest at least $10 million in the project. The state will lease the land to the company and will own the buildings should flyExclusive ever move out.

The main goal of the project is to house flight simulators where flyExclusive will train its pilots. The company now pays about $8 million a year to use flight simulators in other states, where the pilots - who live all across the country - spend about 8,000 nights in hotels, Segrave said.

Bringing that training in-house in Kinston would improve efficiency and help steep pilots in company culture, Segrave says. He said the company is prepared to spend about $45 million on the flight simulators themselves, and persuaded lawmakers to kick in $30 million for the building in return for the economic activity that now goes to training elsewhere.

“The idea was for us to repatriate those dollars back to North Carolina,” he said.

Three years after lawmakers initially approved money for the training center, it remains unbuilt. Segrave said that’s because NCDOT, which owns and runs the airport and business park though the Global TransPark Authority, insisted on charging market rent for the planned center.

“That blew the deal, because then the economics didn’t work for us,” Segrave said.

Jeremy Stroud, the TransPark’s executive director, confirmed Segrave’s account.

“Because the facility would be constructed with public funds and owned by the Global TransPark Authority, the authority required lease terms that provided an appropriate return on the state’s investment,” Stroud wrote in an email. “The parties negotiated in good faith but were unable to finalize an agreement because the prospective tenant did not agree to those terms.”

The new arrangement transfers control of the money to the Commerce Department, which isn’t expected to charge rent for the flyExclusive buildings when they’re completed. The company will still need to pay NCDOT to lease the land underneath the buildings, and the Commerce Department will negotiate those terms.

“The Global TransPark looks forward to working with the Department of Commerce and flyExclusive to implement the legislation,” Stroud wrote, “and support flyExclusive’s expanded maintenance, repair and overhaul facility and training presence at the park.”

Company’s corporate headquarters moves to Raleigh

FlyExclusive operates one of the largest fleets of private jets in the U.S., carrying well-heeled customers to vacation houses, resorts and business meetings across the country. The company maintains and overhauls its planes at the TransPark, where it employs about 200 people, Segrave said.

He said flyExclusive, which became a publicly traded company in late 2023, will generate nearly $500 million in revenue this year.

FlyExclusive has gotten help from the state before. In 2018, the company received a $2.3 million Job Development Investment Grant or JDIG, $2 million from NCDOT and $1 million from the N.C. Global TransPark Foundation to build hangars where planes are painted. In that case, the company had to create 145 jobs to receive the money, which it did.

When flyExclusive initially won the $30 million in state support in 2023, it circulated renderings of a five-story glass building it wanted to build at the TransPark for the flight simulators and corporate offices.

Since then, the company decided to move its headquarters from Kinston to the Triangle, and with it about 125 corporate jobs. Last winter, it leased an entire floor of an office tower in North Hills in Raleigh, where it can more easily recruit people in finance and technology, Segrave said.

“We still intend to grow our presence in the Global TransPark in a big way,” he said, speaking by phone from North Hills. “But we also have to have access to the people and talent to grow the overall business, and I think we have more opportunities to do that here.”