In the private jet industry there are many, many aircraft management providers who offer multi-level services to owners and operators. For some, this can represent a challenge in terms of choosing a partner who will be the best fit for your aircraft and your team. We’ve been doing this kind of thing for over 20 years now so we thought you might appreciate some tips from our team here at Avionco.
In the end, there are really only 3 questions you and your team need to ask yourselves to help identify the best partner for managing your aircraft.
- Does their knowledge match what their website promises? For many, the first step in their search for aircraft management is to conduct a review of websites for firms offering the kinds of services their team requires. Some are well written sites that are easy to navigate while others are not well designed, are overwritten and a bit harder to understand. However, just because you have a good or bad website experience doesn’t mean you should write off a company before you learn more. Seek out the key statements and promises made about their services and develop a set of questions specific to those items. Once that’s done, you’re ready to make contact. Set up a call and grill the provider using your prepared list of questions to see what detail they can provide about the promises they’ve made on their website or whether they seem only able to play back the content you’ve already reviewed. If they can’t easily go deeper into explaining specifics, perhaps they aren’t who you’re looking for.
- Are the people you speak to the people who will directly provide the service? In the many years we’ve been doing this, we’ve often heard stories about initial meetings with company leaders who are never seen or heard of again once a contract is awarded. The execution often falls to a team of subordinates who are not the people who worked with you to negotiate the services and the contract. This can develop into a broken chain of communications as the team on the ground sometimes doesn’t have any idea what the nuances of the agreement are. Make sure you speak directly to the team you will be working with before making any commitments. If it’s not the initial management contact insist on meeting the team and ensuring they can live up to your expectations.
- Do they offer the full suite of services you require or have they just listed items to “cover the bases”?Another thing we’ve learned at Avionco is that every job in private aviation requires a custom approach, therefore there must be a broad range of services with a team of experts ready to deliver as required. List the services you need and find out how they will be executed and who will be providing them. Things like 24/7 Operations and Dispatch, SMS coordination, and SOP’s that are in sync with yours.
Whatever you do, put the necessary time into determining the answers to these 3 questions. In this way you will enter into contracts that are supported by knowledge and above all, trust.