Gulfstream International Airlines has continued to evolve since it was founded in 1991. Its’ founder, Thomas L. Cooper, began organizing the company in 1988 while working as a pilot for Eastern Airlines.

When Eastern shut down in 1991, he began operating Gulfstream as a scheduled Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) Part 135 commuter air carrier and became a FAR Part 121 regional air carrier in 1997.

The company started out with one eight-passenger seat piston-engine-powered Cessna and flew between Miami and Cap Haitien, Haiti, operating out of Miami International Airport. Over the next couple of years, its fleet grew to include eight Cessnas. In 1993, with the acquisition of three Beechcraft 99s, a 15-passenger seat turbo-prop aircraft, Gulfstream expanded into the Bahama Islands market. It started with some of the smaller islands, such as North Eleuthera and Treasure Cay and then moved on to the larger destinations of Grand Bahama and Nassau. Additionally, Gulfstream began to spread its operations within the state of Florida, including Key West Tampa and Orlando.

In 1995, the company began to acquire what would become the backbone of its fleet – the Beechcraft 1900 – and began to sell off the small-piston and 15-passenger seat aircraft. The Beechcraft 1900 is a 19-seat, twin-engine turbo prop that has a pressurized, stand-up cabin, and cruises at approximately 300 miles per hour.

“We have evolved over the years fleetwise to where we operate twenty-seven 19-passenger Beechcraft 1900s and eight 30-passenger Embraer EMB-120s turbo-prop aircraft,” Cooper says. The EMB-120’s have been a part of the airline’s fleet since late 2004 and include cabin service with flight attendants.

Gulfstream signed an initial alliance agreement with United Airlines in 1994, and a more extensive one with Continental Airlines in 1997. Under these codeshare agreements, customers can buy a single ticket from Houston to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas, for example. The customer would fly from Houston to Miami on Continental Airlines and, on the same ticket, board a Gulfstream aircraft in Miami to reach the island of Eleuthera. The passenger’s baggage would be checked all the way through to his or her final destination.

The company now employs more than 600 people and operates more flights to the Bahama Islands from the United States than any other U.S. regional air carrier, Cooper notes.

In June of 2003, Cooper hired David F. Hackett in the position of president of Gulfstream. Hackett has nearly 20 years experience in the airline industry, beginning with Continental in 1985.

Customer Focus
Headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Gulfstream averages more than 200 flights per day and operates throughout the state of Florida, and into and out of the Bahama Islands. It currently runs two charter flights per day from Miami to Havana, Cuba, which require a special permit from the U.S. government and an entry visa from the Cuban government.

Generally, the company’s customers are divided into two groups. Monday through Friday, it operates primarily within Florida, serving businesspeople. Friday through Monday, tourism to the Bahamas drives its business. It redeploys aircrafts to Bahamian routes over the weekend to accommodate leisure customers, flying to even the smallest islands.

Over the past few years, Gulfstream has consistently been among the highest-ranked regional airlines in the country in terms of reliability. For 2006, the company’s on-time performance was 85.1 percent, compared to the 75.4 percent average on-time performance reported by the Department of Transportation for all reporting airlines.