Private Charter’s Dirty Secret- Aircraft Mechanicals – Part 2

Efficiency

Efficient schedules meant that clients could now book flights at much lower rates, which opened the market to new customers (many with tighter budgets). Schedules were streamlined, and airplanes began flying multiple clients a day. Flight crews would no longer have a chance to get to know their passengers, as most crew would likely never meet the same passengers again. Over the next few years, I observed a niche, tight-knit industry, driven by people with a passion for aviation, start to become commoditized.

The focus on efficiency had eclipsed customer service as the new target to hit. In the pursuit for peak efficiency, many companies went out of business.  From Richard Branson’s Virgin Charter’s attempt at an Expedia style approach to Jet Charter, to Jet Direct’s bid at total industry consolidation, everyone was clamoring to be the next big thing. The new doctrine dictated, if the airplane’s moving, there should be a passenger in the back.

This drive for efficiency created many issues. Clients spent the big bucks to charter a flight, trading money for time i.e. schedule flexibility, and convenience.  It was once assumed that an aircraft would be at the customer’s beckon call. After all, clients who travel for business may not always know when their meetings will end. Passengers don’t always know when a concert will run late, when a sporting event will run long, or perhaps when their golf game is going to take longer than expected.

Once all these industry efficiencies started to take hold, the flexibility “feature” of chartering a jet died away.  On the positive side, the price of the flights became better aligned with the actual time spent in the aircraft. This reconfiguration of the pricing model ushered an influx of thousands of new clients; clients who could now afford a private charter. This changed the dynamic of the industry forever. To maintain these efficiencies, aircraft operators must ensure that passengers show up for the flight when they’ve agreed to. This way, departures can operate on-time and thus arrive at the next location on schedule, to pick up the next group of flyers. Taken to the extreme, companies like JetSuite would routinely abandon customers if they showed up more than an hour past the contracted departure time. There seemed to be little concern for the possibility of disenfranchising the loyal customer, as there always seemed to be a steady supply of new customers to take their place. After around 2006, the market really started to boom and many of the desirable customer service features that epitomized the industry were lost.