Flight Dept 1.qxp_Finance 21/07/2021 15:29 Page 1
FLIGHT DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT
Right-Sizing BizJets: Planning for Change It’s important to ensure the company jet offers the best value for money. Andre Fodor shares experiences of when conversations helped change the direction of an aircraft purchase… or nearly thirty five years I have worked and consulted as a private aviation professional, and I still struggle with the costs associated with buying and operating business jets. Nevertheless, beyond the costs (which we as a Flight Department work hard to minimize), private flying does provide tangible benefits, and plenty of value to help justify the expense to the corporations who utilize business aircraft. With that being said, one of the crucial decisions to achieve ownership satisfaction is to choose the best aircraft to acquire, or upgrade to. Picking, and ultimately purchasing, the right-sized aircraft is a complex task, and requires knowledge of the market, finances, operations, and the ability to manage egos and expectations. Following are three occasions when my involvement in aircraft selection played a part in the acquisition process.
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Super-Size It!
Having been hired by a Texan client previously to help him acquire an aircraft and better understand the market, a few years later he called again. This
86 Vol 25 Issue 8 2021 AVBUYER MAGAZINE
time, he explained, a good friend had decided to buy his first aircraft. Unfortunately, this friend had gone head-first into the world of online airplane shopping, hoping to unearth the next great buy. Being from Texas, bigger was better, and my former client’s friend had found an older model Large Jet at a “very good price” that he’d already paid the deposit for. That’s where I was drawn into the audit process. To cut a long story short, this ‘attractively priced’ older bird was just a few hundred hours short of needing a complete landing gear overhaul and engine hot section inspection. Moreover, it had aged for long enough that spare parts were difficult to find. All-in-all, the purchase price would easily have doubled within a few months of the title transferring, with the new owner needing to spend a huge sum of maintenance money to keep the airplane airworthy. At the end of a long, sobering lunch, the client agreed to take a hit on the deposit, and we moved on to smaller business jet territory, where the client’s budget could afford a higher pedigree jet. By rightsizing the airplane search, big trouble was averted.
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