What to do with Google's jet fleet

Nathan Donato-Weinstein, Silicon Valley Business Journal

Now arriving at Mineta San Jose International Airport: The Google fleet.

In a blockbuster development proposal, a joint venture of Signature Flight Support and Blue City Holdings San Jose LLC, an entity connected to Google Inc. principals, wants to build a 29-acre, $82 million aviation facility on a parking lot on the west side of the biggest airport in the heart of Silicon Valley, according to a city memo.

The privately funded facility would house and serve the personal airplanes of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) executives, and other private and corporate aircraft, under a 50-year lease agreement. The deal would bring in big bucks for the airport—about $130 million over the life of the lease.

Blue City Holdings operates a fleet of planes that are the private aircraft of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the company's chairman, Eric Schmidt. Airport Spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes emphasized the Google element of the project is just part of the development, which will also serve private aircraft. The project could attract more corporate users to the airport.

"It's exciting that they were able to attract (Blue City) as one of their clients," she said, adding it wasn't the only element.

"The beauty of this is a private developer is coming in to design and construct these facilities to support general aviation at the airport," she said.

The Google executives currently operate a fleet of private planes out of the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field under the auspices of a company called H211 LLC, but the company's deal with NASA has not been all smooth sailing. It is believed that those planes would move to San Jose, Barnes said.

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