Great Neck native Adam Katz’s Talon Air charter company often counts the wealthy and famous among its clientele, providing boutique air service to business persons, major league athletes and others.
But the company’s collaboration with the nonprofit group Patient Airlift Services has seen the less fortunate also take to the skies on Talon’s planes.
Katz’s company has donated air lift services to help injured and ill people from remote areas find their way to medical treatment.
“The goal is to help people – to be charitable and provide a service that no one else is able to provide to people,” Katz said in an interview.
Talon, based out of Farmingdale, transported seven children with traumatic burn injuries to the Arthur C. Luf Children’s Burn Camp in Connecticut in September, where they received support and training to cope with their injuries.
Katz, whose company offers custom air travel to clients – “everything legal can be done on these airplanes,” he said – told the Great Neck News Talon Air flies about a dozen trips per year for the nonprofit.
“The clientele are all sick people. People who are not well enough to go on commercial airplanes and cannot afford to go on commercial airplanes,” Katz said.”I got involved because I saw that I could be very helpful to people.”
“Working with Talon Air to transport these deserving children to this remarkable camp is extremely gratifying,” Executive director of Patient AirLift Services Eileen Minogue said in a press release. “For the past two years, Talon Air has been one of our indispensable partners in bringing the best care to patients who would either have to settle for inferior services or, as in the case of these young burn survivors, would simply have to manage without them,”
Katz, an alumnus of Great Neck South High School, attended Adelphi University and law school at St. John’s University.
An experienced pilot, Katz developed an interest in aviation after a 1977 flight to Israel with his family following his high school graduation.
“I had always been captivated by aviation,” Katz said. “It’s in my blood and in my history.”
Flying took a back seat after college and law school, until Katz started Talon Air in 1999.
Now his firm boasts stars like LeBron James and Billie Jean King as clients, he said.
“I love to fly,” Katz said. “It’s a lot of fun and very special.”
