Part 2: Lies

Customers — When Trust Takes Off and Crashes

SkyHop Global: A company that claimed to be something it wasn’t.

Kristine Scotto’s told customers a good story—a tale of a driven woman entrepreneur breaking barriers in aviation. Scotto promoted SkyHop as a certified woman-owned business, a claim that likely opened doors.

But court testimony and business records tell a different story. Scotto repeatedly represented that SkyHop was certified woman-owned years before it actually was. The company didn’t obtain formal certification until late 2019—after years of winning praise, renewals, and vendor-of-the-year nominations based on a status it did not yet hold.

That raised uncomfortable questions: if a company’s founder would misrepresent something so central to its identity, what else might she hide?

That answer soon arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.

At LAX, Scotto personally led SkyHop’s fight against the city’s Living Wage Ordinance (LWO), arguing the company shouldn’t have to pay the same minimum wage required of other airport vendors. When regulators pressed for payroll records, SkyHop stonewalled. After sixteen months of dispute, the city terminated SkyHop’s license early—a public rebuke to the company’s defiance.

SkyHop’s story under Kristine Scotto’s leadership is a cautionary tale.