SKY'S THE LIMIT: Jim Segrave's private-jet company is going public, creating a potential Down East high flier.

• Date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Martin, Edward

Several thousand feet below the approach of a SflyExclusive jet into Kinston Regional Jetport, Lenoir County sprawls with farms and forests in one of the state's least robust areas economically. This, concedes President Tommy Sowers, is an unlikely site to attract former managers at the likes of Delta Air Lines, Spirit Airlines and Netjets, the leader in the business of selling shares of aircraft for use by businesses and wealthy individuals.

"But we can offer what companies based in large towns can't," says Sowers, who joined the company in July 2021 and has recruited executives from those companies.

The London School of Economics graduate is a former Army Green Beret major. He held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, taught at Duke University and ran unsuccessfully for a Missouri congressional seat in 2009.

"I tell them if you want to be an anonymous business executive, you've got the rest of the world. [In Kinston]...