Many companies operate one or more aircraft to satisfy their business travel needs, but what happens when expanding travel requirements do not justify the acquisition of another aircraft? Many corporate flight departments are now supplementing in-house fleets with fractional shares.

EMJ Corp., a Chattanooga-based builder of malls and shopping centers, has been using aircraft to sell and support its building projects since the 1960s, according to David Lyall, EMJ's aviation department manager and chief pilot for the past 28 years.

"In 1971, we built our first mall in Tupelo, Mississippi," Lyall noted. "As construction of this project and leasing of the property progressed, we needed to visit the job site and be hands-on. Those are things that just can't be done over the phone. We still use our aircraft the same way today."

The company's airplanes -- a Cessna Citation Excel light jet and a Raytheon King Air C-90A turboprop -- are used primarily to visit building sites, said Lyall. Surveying and buying properties and obtaining the zoning and other government approvals to build a mall requires many site visits over several years. Once the property is acquired, the sites must be developed and sold to retailers. As the leasing part of the shopping mall business has become more sophisticated, EMJ has increased its use of airplanes as sales tools.

"The shopping center industry is extremely competitive," explained Lyall. "If a large retailer wants to move into a market, we'll pick up the head of the retailer's real-estate department and show him our proposed site for a mall. We give him an airborne overview of the transportation infrastructure and nearby residential areas, then we land and drive him around the local neighborhoods to see the existing retail stores and assess potential competition."

Originally, EMJ operated several small, piston-powered airplanes that were flown by part-time pilots. The company purchased its first turboprop aircraft in 1973 and added a jet in 1984. Today, EMJ's aircraft fly a combined 1,100 hours, which is higher-than-average utilization for corporate airplanes. The aircraft regularly travel east to Virginia, west to Utah, north to Maine and Minnesota, and south to Texas and Florida. Next year, Lyall expects to be flying to the West Coast.

Just over a year ago, EMJ decided to meet its expanding travel requirements by obtaining a share of a Beechjet 400 from fractional aircraft provider Flight Options. The 1/4 share not only permits the company to use the airplane for up to 200 hours per year, but also gives it access to a second aircraft on the same day, if needed.

EMJ's decision to buy from Flight Options, a Cleveland-based company that specializes in pre-owned airplanes, was made after considerable deliberation. Due to limited commercial air service, "The flight department is a very necessary part of timely transportation in and out of Chattanooga," said Lyall. However, using a company airplane to bring people from EMJ's Boston office to headquarters in Chattanooga for twice-monthly meetings usually involved flying an airplane one way without passengers, which is not an efficient use of the asset.

EMJ concluded that it was not cost-effective to charter an aircraft for that mission or buy a share of a new aircraft. However, because Flight Options' previously owned airplanes are depreciated, the cost of its shares is lower than that of equivalent shares of a brand-new aircraft.