“I started when I was six,” said Michael Scheeringa, when asked how he wound up in aviation. “I grew up in Phoenix, and when I was in grade school, I used to take the city bus to the airport and watch airplanes take off and land, and count passengers. At that point, I thought I’d want to build airports.”
Scheeringa’s ambitions evolved, but his fascination with aviation remained. By age 16, he was taking flight lessons. (He subsequently earned a pilot’s license but gave up flying for lack of time.) Later, while attending Arizona State University, Scheeringa worked at America West Airlines. In 1991 he took a position at US Airways, where he ultimately became a vice president. Then, in 2004, he moved to Flight Options–a leading fractional provider that also offers jet cards and aircraft management–where he started as COO. [Raytheon, which owned the company, recently sold it to a private-equity firm.–Ed.]
