Bill Pribe had no idea what was about to happen.

In November of 2008, the maintenance manager of the Cessna Citation Service Center in Toledo, Ohio, returned to his job after Thanksgiving break only to learn that he was laid off. A couple of months later, Cessna announced it was closing the center.

Pribe was 53 at the time and began looking for a new job. At the same time, the business aviation industry was in the throes of the Great Recession, so job opportunities weren’t plentiful.

Eventually, he called Dave Corwin, owner of Turbine Standard, an engine shop, to see if his company had any openings. Corwin, whose shop was based near Toledo Express Airport, knew about the closing, instead asked what it would take to keep the service center open as an independent operation. “I started at the Cessna facility in October 1980,” said Pribe, who began his career at the center as a mechanic, worked in inspection, and was later promoted to team lead, supervisor, and then manager. “I had gone through the whole system. I knew how the system operated.”

Corwin and his then-partner Randy Carsten gave Pribe the green light —and financing—to open an independent MRO. “He said, 'Do it, but don’t lose any money,'” said Pribe, who’s Toledo Jet’s general manager.

Thus, in April 2009 Toledo Jet was born. It began operations out of the hangar of Express Avionics, which was owned by Corwin’s brother, Tom. Shortly thereafter, Express merged into Toledo Jet, which combined provides airframe maintenance, complete avionics installations, inspections, non-destructive testing, import and export assistance, and advanced systems troubleshooting.

After the company received its FAA repair station certificate, Pribe and Corwin worked with the port authority to lease the facilities of the former Citation service center, all 39,388 sq ft that it continues to occupy. Since then, Toledo Jet has grown from 9 full-time employees to 25, many of whom have decades of Citation experience. “We’ve got just a really good, knowledgeable group of guys,” Pribe said.

He estimated that 95 percent of its work is on Citation jets: 550s, 560s, Citation Xs, Sovereigns, Latitudes, “and a little bit of Longitudes.” Most of that work comes from corporate and individual Citation operators who previously used the service center, as well as a major fractional-ownership company that Pribe credits with Toledo Jet’s longevity. “We’re here now because we have them (the fractional company) as a customer,” he added.

Around 2012, Toledo Jet expanded to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in Florida. The operation there employs 10 and is co-located with Turbine Standard. It primarily supports general aviation aircraft, Pribe explained. With the increase in private flying since Covid, Toledo Jet’s business has been strong. “Right now, we are basically booked through December, January, and most of February,” Pribe said.

He recalls a moment in the early days of Toledo Jet when he was working on a jet at 2 a.m. and wondering if the business was going to work. Thirteen years later and with a lot of help from Corwin and the company’s employees, it has.

“A lot of people did a lot of work,” Pribe said. “Getting a business off the ground was not high on my list of things to do, but at some point in time, you do what you have to do. It’s been very rewarding.”