KaiserAir History

There's a reason why KaiserAir is called KaiserAir. We got our start in 1946 as the flight arm of the Kaiser companies.
Yes, that Kaiser. Henry J. Kaiser... one of the men who built 20th Century America and shaped industries that are leading us as we move into the 21st.

He was a giant who built dams and highways and automobiles. He was an engineering genius whose motto was, "A problem is an opportunity in work clothes." And when he and his many businesses needed to take flight, he created KaiserAir. His philosophy made us what we are. Get the job done on time, on budget, and most of all, done right. We still operate that way today.

That's why we manage more than a dozen business jets owned by San Francisco Bay Area corporations and private clients, offer business jets for charter flights, and operate an Executive Terminal for the use of private planes at Oakland International Airport. Thirty-three of Fortune Magazine's Top 50 corporations make KaiserAir's Executive Terminal their home when they conduct business in the San Francisco area.

We've played our own role in history. In 1968 we flew the first Gulfstream corporate jet to travel across the South Pacific to Australia and New Zealand. In 1979 we handled the flight of the first corporate aircraft to ever land in the People's Republic of China.

KaiserAir initially was based in Willow Run, Michigan, where Henry J. Kaiser maintained a DC-3 for his auto factory outside Detroit. The operation moved in 1954 to Oakland, headquarters for Kaiser Industries Corporation.

In 1974 the Southern Pacific railroad became the first corporation outside the Kaiser companies to become a client of KaiserAir, which provided management, pilots and maintenance service. Gradually, KaiserAir added more corporate clients, and in 1980 the Kaiser flight department management purchased the operation from Kaiser Steel. The organization has been in continuous operation since its founding in 1946, and the current management has been in place for more than 35 years.