Navy "Grasshoppers," World War II-Era Planes, Corporate Baseball Fans All Converging on KaiserAir This Week

OAKLAND, Calif.- Special oil for aerobatic planes, a place for a pizza wagon, gourmet dinners to be eaten at 40,000 feet on a luxury Gulfstream corporate jet, and stretch limousines. And how about six tickets to A's playoffs?

These are just a few of the requests for Gregg Rorabaugh this week as he prepares for perhaps one of the most unusual mixes of private aircraft ever to arrive at KaiserAir's Executive Terminal: the civilian planes participating in the Fleet Week airshow and the dozens of corporate jets expected to arrive for the baseball playoffs in both Oakland and San Francisco.

And in the midst of this, almost two dozen special Navy guests will arrive Thursday for the 10 a.m. departure of two U.S. Navy VRC30 transport aircraft, known as "Grasshoppers" because their wings fold from a span of 80 feet to 26 feet. The Grasshoppers will fly out to the Pacific to land on the USS Constellation, which will join the Military Parade of Ships scheduled to pass under the Golden Gate Bridge beginning at noon.

Rorabaugh, vice president, properties and line service at KaiserAir, is the person responsible for seeing that KaiserAir meets all the needs of pilots and passengers on private aircraft, no matter how unusual. Services have even included taking laundry home for an incoming crew who couldn't find a laundromat open overnight.

Although he expects the rest of this week to be busy, he really doesn't expect any problems with the mixture of everything from corporate Gulfstreams and Hawkers to Russian MiG fighters and World War II-era "Red Baron" Stearmans. The only change he has made in usual operations, Rorabaugh said, is to delay a scheduled slurry seal on the pavement.

"The airshow performers are really a good group of people, and they're very easy to work with," he said. "So are our corporate clients. And they're usually very relaxed when they're coming in for a sports event."

He'll take pains to keep the small airshow aircraft separate from the corporate jets, primarily to be sure that the small planes are protected from jet blast.

"We're used to handling both corporate executives here for sports events at the Network Associates Coliseum and across the Bay in San Francisco, and we're used to having the airshow performers," Rorabaugh said. "We usually just don't have them both at the same time."

KaiserAir, one of the oldest full-service aviation management companies in the nation, specializes in the operation and maintenance of Gulfstream, Hawker, Cessna and other business jet aircraft. 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. Its history dates back to 1946 when it began as the flight department for the Kaiser companies founded by the late industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.

Additional information is available on the Internet at www.kaiserair.com or by telephoning 510-569-9622.

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