Winchester — In just a few months, ProJet Aircraft Services has risen, like a glider riding a thermal current, from a start-up to a business ready to invest up to $1.2 million in a new facility at Winchester Regional Airport.

ProJet — which provides customized air travel consulting, aircraft maintenance, and management services to businesses — will break ground in late September or early October on a facility that will include 13,600 square feet of hangar space and 3,600 square feet of office space, said company Vice President Paul Kosubinsky. The hangar will be able to hold a jet at about the size of a small Boeing 737 (business jet), he said.

When people walk in, the atmosphere will be anything but industrial. “It’s going to be a showroom over there,” Kosubinsky said, likening the space to a BMW auto dealership showroom.

ProJet partners Paul Kosubinsky (from left), Shye Gilad, Craig McAteer, Tom Carrigan, and Jim McLaurin pose at Winchester Regional Airport, where they plan to break ground on a new facility. (Photo by Scott Mason)

ProJet also has enough room on property at Winchester Regional Airport to construct a mirror image of that building if more space is needed, he said.

And it may come to that. Interest in the corporate hangar is already high among ProJet clients and others, said company President Craig McAteer.

Winchester Regional Airport Executive Director Serena R. Manuel said the company has been approved to operate a business at the airport, and now it and the Winchester Regional Airport Authority need to work out a land lease. However, she said she does not anticipate any problems with the 40-year lease.

Such a project is particularly attractive to the airport because it brings in corporate hangar space that the authority cannot incur the debt to build. Also, the hangar would become property of the airport at the end of the lease, Manuel said.

In addition, “We’re excited about the potential customers to the airport,” Manuel said.

The airport makes the majority of its money through the sales of jet fuel and avgas.

Although it may seem like ProJet is rocketing ahead, the company led by five current and former pilots only came together after about seven months of discussions about what the company would be and how the partnership would work.

First came the people. “I selected people that were exceptional at what they did,” within the airline industry, said McAteer from a conference room at the company’s 401 Pegasus Court headquarters, which looks out onto the airport, which lies across Bufflick Road.

The core leadership group became McAteer; Kosubinsky; Tom Carrigan (vice president of operations); Shye Gilad (executive vice president of corporate safety and security); Jim McLaurin (vice president of sales and consulting); and Cary Yates (vice president of flight operations.)

All have worked in airline industry management, and they’ve been involved in a host of training areas, from pilot training to safety and security.

Each invested the company, as well. “We all supplied the company with a certain amount of seed money,” McAteer said.

The money wasn’t what anyone would call extraordinary, Gilad said. “No one here is independently wealthy.”

However, the men did devote a great deal of their time to their new business. They networked and asked for assistance. People offered their advice, sometimes for free, and the men also made sure that if they need outside financing, it will be there.

They created a partnership all were satisfied with, too. McAteer said they checked out companies that didn’t work, and learned from those mistakes, becoming educated the complexities of building a successful partnership.

The men researched area airports in search of a home, eventually settling upon Winchester for a number of reasons. It lies beyond the limits of the Air Defense Identification Zone around Washington, D.C., which gave the company the ability to operate a business outside of very controlled air space, McAteer said.

There’s also an economic advantage to keeping an aircraft in Winchester, as opposed to a more expensive location in Northern Virginia, Gilad said.

The Winchester area welcomed them, too, Gilad said. The airport has been great to work with, as has the Winchester-Frederick County Economic Development Commission and Frederick County itself.

The county’s Board of Supervisors has approved a grant of up to $120,000 from its Economic Development Incentive Fund to help with ProJet’s hangar project, according to a recent Economic Development Commission press release.

The business receiving such support operates in a few different ways, according to its managing partners. It offers consulting to businesses interested in learning about the most affordable ways it can have employees travel by air.

ProJet will also help companies choose the right aircraft if they opt to buy one, and it will provide a home, maintenance, and crew for the aircraft, if needed.

For companies for which charter services prove the best fit, the company basically has access to a fleet of charter flights, Gilad said.

If they need to be, “We’re a turnkey flight department,” for companies, McAteer said.

They have no ties with any particular manufacturer, and the point of the business isn’t to create aircraft sales. “We don’t just try to sell an aircraft to a potential client,” McAteer said.

Instead, the goal is to find the best solution for a client, and sometimes that could mean everything from an aircraft purchase to flying on commercial airlines, Gilad added.

But hopefully, once a client has used ProJet’s services, “at least they will be armed with that knowledge,” Gilad said.

While the company will be based in Winchester, its principals said that clients with aircraft will not have to fly out of Winchester Regional Airport. Rather, the aircraft can be brought to the client.

The company is in the final stages of aircraft acquisition for a few clients, McAteer and Gilad said.

ProJet has been busier than they ever dreamed, and McAteer said he knows the young company will persevere.

“We’re having fun,” he said.

But they are also working hard at making it a success. “If it was easy, everybody would do it,” Carrigan said.