Company History

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Founded by the current President, Gary Richards, Ameriflight began operations at Burbank, California in 1968, as a small demand charter and cargo service flying a 1956 Aero Commander 560A. Although named "California Air Charter", we soon focused our efforts on scheduled high-priority cargo flying and de-emphasized passenger charter work. Our first expansion to another location occurred in 1970 with the start of operations at Oakland International Airport.

In 1971, California Air Charter (CalAir) teamed up with United Couriers (now known as UCI DistributionPlus), a ground courier company specializing in scheduled route services for the banking industry. UCI DistributionPlus is a wholly-owned subsidiary ATI Systems International, Inc., which has served the financial industry since 1940.

In 1976, California Air Charter was contracted to provide service for a major California bank, adding a new customer and six Piper Navajo routes in California a contract we still serve today. 1981 saw the addition of the first Learjet to our fleet. In 1983, CalAir expanded its customer base beyond the financial industry with our appointment as a feeder carrier to support a new overnight package delivery service. In conjunction with the new small package cargo service for this customer, we became a contractor for the loading and ground handling service of their large jet freighters. Additional contracts with various freight forwarders in the ensuing years have allowed us to expand into other states, including Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Ohio and Texas. This growth continues today. Expansion of CalAir’s jet fleet came in 1986, when we were awarded a contract by a consortium of financial institutions to provide daily service to the east coast and other Federal Reserve Bank locations throughout the U.S. By this time our routes had grown to include many destinations outside of California; and in 1987, the "Ameriflight" name was adopted to better reflect the scope of our interstate air cargo services.

Ameriflight has continued to grow with advances in the small package air cargo industry. In 1992, we were contracted by a freight forwarder to operate their feeder aircraft to many east coast destinations from Cincinnati. We have continued to add to our customer base, serving an increasing variety of local and long distance courier companies, priority freight forwarders and banking institutions.