Jay Mesinger

How to make the most of your flight department

April 19, 2002:

More than ever I am being asked directly from companies’ financial departments about financial and use issues rather than the old conversations about blue skies and new technology. These conversations strike the very heart of today’s most meaningful topic; the need to maximize capacity while increasing efficiency and simultaneously lowering operating costs. This task can feel extremely threatening to a flight department manager, but when broken into small information gathering tasks and when looked at with an open mind it can be both painless and successful.

Consequently, this is a much more exciting topic than the old discussion of justification for the sake of keeping aircraft at all. To develop a strategy to maximize capacity, find efficiencies and lower costs one must start with questions that on the surface seem basic. Yet when the answers are woven together, the mosaic most often creates the blueprint for growth and solid justification.

Much of the information needed to begin this analysis can be derived from internal flight department records. The most obvious information will include the past year’s flight information including any use of charter aircraft and/or fractional shares as supplemental lift. This literally means the records of each flight leg, origination and destination and the length of each leg in both distance and time. All of this is used to determine the actual patterns of use, how those patterns agree or disagree with the intended utilization of the aircraft and to identify opportunities for efficiencies. Each leg documented should be noted as a passenger leg, a repositioning leg or a deadhead leg and all be noted separately.

The next phase of the information gathering process will take you from the flight department’s records to the corporate side of the company to learn more about changing business and travel needs. In addition, since 9/11, many companies have either pulled out of the drawer and dusted off or created for the first time corporate travel policies. Taking time to work with key people within the decision process of the company will lead to stronger ties to the flight department and more often than not a greater demand for the company’s aircraft.

Standardizing a fleet can also lead to lower cost of operations due to lower training costs, lower inventoried parts and maintenance costs. In flight departments with multiple locations, this standardization can also greatly reduce deadhead time and increase capacity. These efficiencies can be realized by replacing a home base aircraft operation with a floating base philosophy. In this case, the crew is assigned a home base, but the plane floats between locations. Basically wherever it lands, it is home.

Another opportunity to identify efficiencies is in charge back rates. Very often flight departments use one charge back rate for every flight hour regardless of the equipment that is used. This takes away the perceived need to pick planes based on their individual abilities.

For instance, if a company has a large number of north south trips and they use aircraft designed to go from coast to coast to complete these missions, but they only use one charge back rate they will never see the extreme inefficiency in their operation. If instead they save these aircraft for the coast to coast and inter-national trips, use shorter range aircraft for the north-south trips and assign different appropriate charge back rates to the different aircraft they will quickly realize significant cost savings.

There is no single solution to every flight department’s and company’s needs. The most efficient departments use a component of owned, fractional and charter to accomplish the needed capacity with greatest efficiency. The bottom line: gather the data, determine your current and future business and travel needs and then develop a set of goals to strive for. Then get out of the office and promote the use and efficiency of this method of travel.

More often than not by engaging the flight department and management in this project you will create new department allies, collaboratively work to increase capacity, simultaneously find efficiencies that result in lower costs and consequently set your department up for a long, solid future.


- Jay Mesinger