Alpine Air Express, Inc., a regional air cargo carrier providing critical air infrastructure supporting a wide range of integrated logistics operations throughout North America, has acquired Suburban Air Freight Inc.

This strategic addition marks Alpine's second acquisition since becoming a portfolio company of AE Industrial Partners, LP (AEI), a private equity firm specialising in aerospace, defence and government services, space, power and utility services, and specialty industrial markets. Alpine also acquired the assets of Great Lakes Airlines in 2020.

Headquartered in Provo, Utah, Alpine is a leading Part 135 air cargo operator with a long and distinguished history of providing its customers with safe and reliable air cargo transportation services. Alpine operates a growing fleet of more than 50 active aircraft and owns a proprietary supplemental type certificate (STC) to convert the Beechcraft 1900D aircraft from passenger to cargo configuration, providing a unique value proposition to its blue-chip customers such as UPS, U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and others.

Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, Suburban is a Part 135 regional air cargo carrier providing dedicated air cargo services to DHL and other leading customers. Much like Alpine, Suburban primarily operates a fleet of Beech 1900s and operates a highly complementary integrated maintenance operations team. Suburban's leadership team of Geoff Gallup and Jay Armstrong will remain with the company to help transition Suburban into this next chapter and assist with the integration into Alpine.

"Suburban is a leading regional air cargo carrier with a reputation for quality service and safety," says Michael Dancy, CEO of Alpine Air. "The addition of Suburban and its talented team significantly expands our company and its market position, enabling us to better serve our new and existing customers."

"Growing e-commerce activity, faster delivery requirements and supply chain complexity has increased the demand for large scale, reliable regional air cargo service providers," adds Jon Nemo, senior partner at AEI. "We have invested significantly in Alpine, including this strategic addition of Suburban, to create a leading provider of critical air cargo infrastructure capable of meeting this growing demand."

"Safe and reliable service has also been our key focus while providing additional routes to better serve our customers, and as part of Alpine, we'll have greater resources to realise both objectives," says Gallup. "We look forward to partnering with both the Alpine and AEI teams as we expand our business."

BDO served as financial advisor and Akerman served as legal advisor to AIpine. Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith was the legal advisor to Suburban.