When Bill Lear rolled out his first jet in the mid-sixties, the
business community saw a remarkable new tool that delivered almost
unlimited flexibility in travel schedules and efficiency. The real
milestone, however, would come in the mid-eighties when NetJets
launched the first fractional aircraft ownership company. The idea of
paying only for the time you use the aircraft suddenly made aviation
available to legions of companies which could not solely justify the
cost of owning alone. But what may be one of the most significant
events in this evolution of business aviation, a new form of fractional
ownership that makes airplanes available to individuals and businesses
of almost any size, is now on the radar, thanks largely to a company in
Texas called PlaneSmart!
“This totally changed the game for us,” says Steve W., the CFO of
an oil company. After careful research, Steve recommended his company
buy fractional ownership in a Cirrus SR22, a high tech single-engine
airplane that is technologically more advanced than many airlines. The
all composite aircraft comes with a menagerie of onboard computers, is
as comfortable as any luxury car and even has a parachute capable of
bringing the entire aircraft safely back to earth. When Steve ran the
numbers of switching over to PlaneSmart!, it was a no brainer. “It’s a
perfect application for us, and it doesn’t make sense to do it any
differently.”
PlaneSmart! manages a fleet of late model Cirrus aircraft based in
Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas, are broadening their aircraft
product line, and continuing to expand into other markets. PlaneSmart!
is available 24/7 and offers a professional pilot for the non-pilot
owners. Fractional owners of the planes pay only for the hours the
aircraft flies and PlaneSmart! takes care of everything else, from
maintenance to insurance. Even if the fractional owner’s exact aircraft
is for some reason unavailable, another aircraft is
usually ready to roll.
“It was about 2-3 times cheaper than the aircraft chartering we’d been
doing,” Steve says. His company operates 8 field offices around the
state, and situations arise where they need to respond immediately. “If
the aircraft we wanted to charter wasn’t available, we were dead in the
water. PlaneSmart! literally changed the way we do business.”
Here is how the PlaneSmart! program works. The advantages of
this new paradigm for business aviation comes from several sources.
First, businesses can purchase only the amount of airplane they need,
from an eighth to a half interest. Second, an established fee, which
includes all fuel and oil, is charged per flight hour, allowing for
easy budgeting. Third, the ‘unfun’ of aircraft ownership—maintenance,
insurance, chart/GPS/XM subscriptions, warranty issues, pilot training,
aircraft storage and even a regular wash and wax--are |
all covered in one simple monthly management fee. Compared to whole aircraft ownership, the monthly
expense with PlaneSmart! covers all typical expenses for a fraction of
the price and 0% of the hassle. Businesses merely call to schedule a
flight and they’re good to go.
Kevin D., another owner in the PlaneSmart! program, works with a
company that markets implants and biologics for surgical fixation,
correction and tissue regeneration of the spine. His corporation
regularly brings surgeons into the home office to provide a two-way
dialogue between the company’s research scientists and medical
practitioners. The company had tried aircraft leasing, but the
economics were not ideal. But traveling by commercial airliner didn’t
work well either. Kevin said that because of the way airlines have to
schedule, “a one day trip to our office took three days.”
One day Kevin thumbed through a magazine left behind by another
passenger riding an airliner. He stopped to read an article about
PlaneSmart! “I immediately saw the value and when I got back home, I
contacted them. The rest is history,” he says.
Now Kevin’s group uses the Cirrus for a variety of missions, including
bringing doctors to the company headquarters. “We put a surgeon on an
airplane and an hour later I get a call that he’s arrived and getting
into a limousine. It would not have been possible in the old days to
have somebody to go from Austin to Lubbock to Abilene and still be home
that night.” The value of being back home at the end of the day with
his family is not lost on Kevin. He is also a father to two daughters.
Stuart S. also spent more time away from his family than he would have
preferred. As a real estate developer with projects the width and
breadth of Texas, it was “Amarillo by morning, and Houston that night.”
Needless to say, Stuart spent a lot of time driving, or waiting for
Southwest Airlines. Then someone handed him a PlaneSmart! brochure.
“The last thing I ever thought I’d do is be involved in private aviation,” he says. Stuart is not a pilot
and has never owned any airplane. But the thought of being able to pick
up the phone, schedule a business flight and be back in the office that
afternoon lingered.
“I became very quickly convinced that the high tech Cirrus was perfect
for me,” he finally admitted. “I can get in and out of these places on
my schedule and still be home for dinner.”
Stuart is now in his third year of fractional
ownership with PlaneSmart! “I’ve exceeded my time allotment every year!” he says with a smile.
Moreover, Stuart enjoys handing off the management of his asset, the
fractional share of a new Cirrus. “I don’t want to have to bother with
managing a plane. I don’t want to have to hire
|
someone to manage the plane, and I don’t want to have to manage them.
That’s not my business. But it is PlaneSmart!’s business and they do a
good job of it.”
But when it’s all said and done, does owning a fractional share of a
Cirrus really show up on his bottom line? “Yes,” says Stuart without
hesitation. “I get an enormous amount of business done thanks to
PlaneSmart!”
The fractional ownership program has been so successful for non-pilot
owners that many are now looking to expand into larger, more capable
aircraft for the times they need more capacity or range. PlaneSmart!
now offers fractional shares of a Pilatus PC-12 turboprop, an Eclipse
500 light jet, and has other aircraft in the pipeline, including the
new Cirrus Vision jet.
“Our customers told us that sometimes they need a jet or turboprop for
the speed, space and weight carrying capacity, but didn’t want to own
one outright” says PlaneSmart!’s CEO, Michael
Brosler. “Adding these larger aircraft to our program was just the natural evolution of our fractional ownership program.”
Ricardo D., a PlaneSmart! customer from Austin, is the first to
acknowledge the need for larger aircraft. His family business does
extensive real estate development in Mexico, and owns a Lear jet and
King Air. “But you need to justify the costs of flying those
airplanes,” Ricardo says. That’s why he is also a fractional aircraft
owner with PlaneSmart!
“For many of the trips I take, it’s just me or a small group that’s
traveling. It just doesn’t always make sense to fly the jet,” he says.
Ricardo looked at the costs of acquiring another aircraft, wholly
owning something smaller and more economical. “But it just didn’t
pencil,” he said, “owning the entire airplane myself.” For a while he
resigned himself to scheduled airliners, but stumbled across some
information about PlaneSmart!’s fractional ownership program. It made
sense for his company’s bottom line, as well as his scheduling
requirements. “Now I can get there in a few hours instead of taking
several flights and traveling all day.”
Even better, Ricardo has already earned his pilot license and often
takes an instructor with him when he’s flying the Cirrus. Soon he’ll
have his instrument rating and hopes to translate his experience into
the left seat of a Pilatus PC-12 that PlaneSmart! will be managing
later this Spring.
From his experience in owning and flying his Cirrus, Ricardo is looking
forward to his managed share of the big turboprop. “I am really
convinced the program works great,” he says. While there are times
he’ll need a larger aircraft, he doesn’t need one all the time. Ricardo
is part of a group of PlaneSmart! fractional owners who take advantage
of the opportunity to buy only as much airplane as they need.
|
