AIN has learned that AirFlite, the perennially highly rated FBO at Southern California’s Long Beach Airport/Daugherty Field, has been sold to Ross Aviation. According to a source, parent company Toyota, which has owned the FBO for more than a quarter-century, informed the staff of the sale last Friday, and a Ross Aviation transition team was at the site earlier this week. 

Speculation about the fate of the location had swirled since 2014, when Toyota announced it was relocating its North American headquarters from the Los Angeles area to Plano, Texas. The automaker’s North American flight department was one of the major tenants at the FBO.

The reconstituted Ross Aviation, backed by private-equity firm KSL Capital Partners, was formed from the six FBOs that Signature Flight Support was required to divest as a condition of its purchase of Landmark Aviation earlier this year. The previous Ross Aviation chain of 19 FBOs was itself sold to Landmark in 2014.

According to the source, the transaction is expected to close by the end of November, at which time the location will be renamed Ross Aviation-Long Beach, as Toyota will retain the AirFlite name.