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The company, owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, is consolidating the operations of its international unit, NJI Inc., which oversees the company's largest jets, such as Gulfstream models, that are capable of transcontinental flights, the Columbus Dispatch reported last month. Gulfstream is based in Savannah.
The unit has about 95 employees in South Carolina and Georgia, the newspaper reported. About 25 will remain in their current locations, along with an unspecified number of mechanics. About 70 are being offered relocation to Columbus.
"We will be relocating most of the NJI business functions from South Carolina and Georgia to our corporate and operational headquarters in Columbus," NetJets chairman and CEO David Sokol told Aviation International News earlier this month. "The decision was made after detailed analysis and careful deliberation and is the result of NetJets' ongoing, long-term business planning process that began in the fall."
Faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, the company laid off 350 office workers -- most of them in Columbus -- and furloughed 495 pilots late last year, according to the Dispatch. The company has returned to profitability this year.
A NetJets spokeswoman did not answer e-mailed questions from The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette on Wednesday or Thursday.
The company has been in the Okatie office about five years. Its lease runs through the end of the year, said Harry Kitchen, president of The Foxfield Co., the building's owner.
The office is tucked in Okatie Commerce Park, a wooded office park off S.C. 170 near its intersection with U.S. 278. It is a 24-hour operation that houses dispatchers, travel agents, accounting personnel and supervisors for the company's fleet of about 50 Gulfstreams, according to employees.
