California's Encompass Aviation ceases flight ops

Surf Air (URF, Santa Monica) ended its flights out of San Carlos,US on June 29 but allegedly still owes San Mateo County, in which the airport is located, at least USD131,371 in taxes for 2017, The Almanac has reported.

Local residents had protested against the operations of the membership-based airline at the airport earlier this year. At the peak of its activity at San Carlos, Surf Air operated as much as 45 flights per day to and from the airport.

San Mateo County officials said that the airline might owe even more in overdue taxes for 2015 and 2016, although it has not calculated the amounts yet.

Surf Air is currently involved in multiple legal proceedings related to alleged debts. Encompass Aviation (LC, Hawthorne), which until mid-June operated Surf Air's flights, filed a lawsuit demanding payment for USD3.1 million in unpaid bills. In addition, the US federal government claimed that Surf Air owed it USD2.33 million in overdue taxes for 2016 and 2017.

The virtual carrier filed a counterclaim against Encompass,...

Surf Air (URF, Santa Monica) has filed a counterclaim against its once capacity provider Encompass Aviation (LC, Hawthorne), accusing it of demanding payments "far in excess" of the contractual rates, failing to provide transparency in regard to financial and operational data, and mismanagement, AIN Online has reported.

The lawsuit follows an earlier one filed by Encompass Aviation against Surf Air, in which it alleged that Surf Air failed to pay part of the amount owed for flights operated by Encompass and was notoriously late with other payments.

Surf Air terminated its relationship with Encompass Aviation, dating back to May 2017, on June 15, 2018, and subsequently awarded a charter contract to Advanced Air (Council Bluffs). Despite the termination of the contract, eight of Surf Air's PC-12s continue to be operated by Encompass Aviation and are proferred to the open market for charters. A further four units of the type have been moved to Tradewind Aviation (TJ, Oxford, CT), a capacity provider for RISE (Dallas Love Field...

Encompass Aviation (LC, Hawthorne) has announced it has withdrawn its pending application for Commuter Air Carrier Authorization given the recent termination of its commercial partnership with Surf Air (URF, Santa Monica).

The California-based charter specialist had applied for the authorization in June last year to enable it to operate scheduled interstate air transportation of persons, property and mail. At present, Encompass's FAA Part 135 operations specifications restrict it to intrastate operations within California.

At the time, it intended to use the authorization to both provide Part 135 commuter operations to Surf Air and other potential charterers nationwide. It also planned to use it to provide its own Part 135 commuter, ad-hoc charter and scheduled services in new, under-served short-haul markets (e.g. Essential Air Service markets) under the brand name ROAM.

However, in a filing lodged with the US Department of Transportation (DOT) on June 20, Encompass said it was withdrawing its application on the grounds that it does not want the DOT to "extend its resources" reviewing a business arrangement that has not...