Brandon Wilcox, one of the owners of Professional Air in Bend, stands with the airplane the company is using for its new charter jet service out of Bend Municipal Airport. The jet can travel to Los Angeles in 90 minutes.

What’s the next big thing in Central Oregon air travel? Locally based charter jet service, according to local industry officials.

Bend-based Professional Air officially began charter service on its eight-seat Beechjet 400 late Wednesday, when the plane received Federal Aviation Administration certification.

The service is the first Central Oregon-based charter jet service, but several others are being planned.

”The airlines are becoming more and more cumbersome to fly on,” said Brandon Wilcox, one of the owners of Professional Air, noting the increasingly complicated security restrictions for commercial flights. ”With every terrorist attack or near miss, it’s becoming more difficult for people to fly (commercial airlines).”

Wilcox said those increasing hassles, combined with the growing population and wealth of Central Oregon, made charter jet flights a no-brainer.

”The level of aviation activity is directly representative of the economic viability of an area,” he said. ”If you see the local economy growing, you will also see (charter) aviation activity grow alongside it.”

Professional Air charges $2,050 per hour for Beechjet flights, which can reach Seattle in 35 minutes and Los Angeles in 90. The jet also has enough range to travel three-quarters of the way across the country without refueling.

Company officials say they have already booked 20 hours of flying time for this month since being certified, with clients traveling to destinations like Dallas, Salt Lake City and Sacramento.

Rod Ray, president of Bend Research Inc., said his company charters about 100 to 150 hours of flights every year.

”We do charter quite a bit, and we’re happy that something is now available locally,” said Ray, whose company also uses charters based in Portland and Medford. ”We typically gain a day by using (charter). We can go to meetings in Southern California, have it run long and still come back the same day. With commercial flights, we usually have to take a travel day.”

He added that a charter jet’s cabin is similar to a small meeting room, allowing passengers to better utilize their flight time for business purposes.

Professional Air’s Wilcox said his company is looking to add two or three light jets, with passenger capacities ranging from three to six, to run air-taxi routes within the next three years.

Redmond-based Wings of the Cascades is planning similar services, with two light jets on order and scheduled to be certified for charter by the end of the year.

The company also is looking at starting charter services with a 10-seat turboprop aircraft in the next four months, said Mary Schu Dominick, president and chief pilot.

”We probably get three or four calls for charters every week,” Schu Dominick said. ”And most of them we can’t do because they want to fly to places like the Midwest or carry 10 to 12 people. No charter aircraft in the region can do that right now, but we’re working on it.”

Both Wings of the Cascades and Professional Air have four piston-prop charter aircraft each, which are slower and smaller than jets.

Greg Phillips, manager at Bend Municipal Airport, is happy to see local companies starting to get behind charter jets.

”We’ve seen a lot of charter jets from other places bringing people here and dropping them off,” Phillips said. ”And a lot of companies here want to be able to travel elsewhere. (With local charter jet service), it allows that currency to stay in Bend.”