Florida-based charter company Elite Jets is recruiting 12 new staff, including seven new pilots, to help meet increasing demand. The company, which is headquartered in Naples, said the recruitment reflected increased demand from business and leisure travellers, who are choosing private charters rather than first class commercial seats.

Stephen Myers, executive vice president, Elite Jets, said: “The past two years have marked a period of tremendous growth across the private aviation industry, as affluent travellers are choosing to fly privately over first class commercially.”

Myers added: “At any given point, we might have jets across multiple time zones or even multiple countries, so we need to maintain a ground support team and pilot teams capable of providing an exceptional, reliable travel experience to our passengers.”

The new pilots include six first officers and a new captain, Matthew Gilmore. Gilmore will captain the Embraer Phenom 300.

All six of the first officers are also Phenom 300 pilots. They include: Tanner Caviness, Benjamin Ellis, who served in the New Jersey Air National Guard, Carlos Reyes, who volunteers as a pilot with Civil Air Patrol in search and rescue missions, and former marine Al Russo.

The other two first officers are: Patrick Teszler who served as a combat support emergency medical technician (EMT) for two deployments in Kuwait with the U.S. Armed Forces, and Scott Collins.

Elite Jets has also hired Dave Cook as accounting assistant, Deidre Dodge and Jennifer Pierce as client services managers, Rumen Ivanov as manager of information technology, and Martin Ricciuti as director of quality and chief inspector.

The new ground and air members bring the total new employees at the company this year up to 19, following the recruitment of four new pilots and three other staff members in January this year.

Elite Jets’ fleet includes four Embraer Phenom 300s and one Embraer Legacy 500 that serve across North, Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.