“Michael not only understands the commercial aspects of VIP jet operations but has a precision focus on safety and maintenance.  This hands-on experience is invaluable as it instils instinctive trust,” said Robin Dunlop, founding partner, ALTEA. 

Remarking on his appointment, the consulting firm said that in addition to his vast network within the VIP aviation industry, Michael Hoby Andersen brings extensive technical and operational experience to ALTEA, particularly in aircraft acquisitions and sales.

“ALTEA has the ability to engage with customers from all angles” said Andersen while commenting on why he joined the firm. “We offer one of the strongest support structures across asset management, financial solutions, design, and completions to guide and inspire owners and operators across the worldwide bizjet market.  This is what sets us apart, and it is what attracted me to join the business.”

Andersen recently facilitated the off-market sale of a Global 6000 for ALTEA.

Dunlop said that despite opportunities in sustainability initiatives, digital transformation, and market growth, the firm’s strength lies in personalized services for specific client needs.

We can help our customers – private individuals, banks, corporations and governments – navigate careful and strategic investments in the sourcing, purchase and completion of all sizes of aircraft, added Dunlop.

The post ALTEA appoints bizjet specialist Michael Hoby Andersen as partner appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

They all felt that the industry was moving in a positive direction for themselves and their clients. Prices were holding in a way that, although down slightly and still moving incrementally in that direction, did not provoke anyone to fear that the bottom was dropping out. Each felt that the value their clients see in aircraft ownership was continuing, and demand was remaining strong. In talking to our clients, thinking about not having the private travel solution that they have, was not a serious contemplation.

Of course, there are always discussions taking place internally and externally amongst their clients’ companies, flight departments, or friends who are operating aircraft. Generally, the one topic that garners the most attention is operating costs. The salaries of flight department personnel have risen dramatically over the past few years. These people are vital to the safe, efficient and reliable operation of these assets.

However, the increase in their cost has created greater visibility, thus invigorating the discussions. Not sure these will ever change in a downward direction, as service providers can be one of the stickiest forms of inflation. Attrition, increased ownership, and usage, without a drastic increase in labour are just a few reasons this line item will likely not go down in the near term.

Subjects that make a few people say: stop the world I want to get off, centre around the disruption of use caused by the ever-present supply chain issues. Labour is top of that list. The shortages of experienced personnel at the manufacturers and MRO and maintenance facilities are continuing to cause serious discomfort for all. Just yesterday I had a client tell me about a six-week delay in the scheduled modernisation completion date for their aircraft. This will of course cause alternative lift costs to rise as well as scheduling headaches that will accompany this delay. Multiply this across the industry and you will see the dissatisfaction this causes.

Many of my friends I spoke with who are sales professionals shared a similar band-aid solution. Start by setting better expectations for their clients, beginning with the extended time it takes for the sale and purchase timeline. What used to be 30–45 days for a prebuy could easily now be a 60-day process. And that is just the timeline for the event and corrective action. This does not even speak to the lead time in finding a slot and starting this process, which we all understand takes as long as an additional 30 days tacked on.

So, to help the client or prospect ease their frustration, we are all being very careful with this delicate discussion of timing to adjust to a new norm of expectations. These strategies can only be band-aids simply due to the fact that we, as aircraft brokers, can have very little impact on a solution for supply chains and labour shortages.

By-and-large our collective constituents have been on the side of staying the course and enjoying the benefits of aircraft ownership and operation. They are feeling optimistic about owning and operating even in a world of added costs as well as timelines for maintenance and modernisation.

They are looking forward to many years of enjoyment. With respect to those saying: stop the world I want to get off, we are all seeing very very few people who feel as if they approached the ownership with not enough facts and must get out.

Thankfully, the vast majority of first-time buyers are enjoying the excitement of ownership. This all adds up to a sustainable world for our owners and all of us who service this distinctive group.

The post What makes your world go round? appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

The problem, he says, is “boutique” is bandied around too often, but in his case he really means it.

“Everyone says boutique, but you cannot be boutique when you have 25 or 30 planes, because the management are lost in board meetings and travelling all the time,” he says.

Instead, Belgian Laitat, who was previously the CEO and accountable manager of Abelag/Luxaviation Belgium, intends to cap his fleet at 15.

“My goal is not fleet size,” he says. “Of course, we will be profitable. It’s not a goal to lose money. But my biggest pride is that at Abelag very few owners left. Some of them, I was operating their fourth successive plane. So if you have that as a passion, you can make a living quite decently.”

Fulfil promises

JetHouse, which is registered in Malta, launched with a Dassault Falcon 7X in Brussels in early 2024 and Laitat plans to add another aircraft “every six to nine months”.

“I have good confidence that they will come,” says Laitat, who oversaw a fleet of 25 aircraft at Abelag. The 15 is “not a magic number”, he adds, but about the level where he and his senior team of eight, with about 175 years’ collective experience in the business, can provide a “boutique” service. Alongside Laitat as founders are Nicolas Willemot, the CFO, and Tina Boeckx, director of flight operations, both also formerly of Abelag.

“It becomes difficult to fulfil promises because it’s always the founder or the CFO, who at some point met an owner and said, ‘OK, we’re going to pamper you’. But when it’s too big, the person feels you don’t follow them in the same way. So it’s really a matter of time that is driving this number in the fleet.

“We don’t like to disappoint. Of course, sometimes, even the bad weather is your fault but having a client who sends you a handwritten note saying, ‘I’m so happy to have joined you’. It’s what we have in our blood.”

Passion for service

JetHouse’s natural market is Europe, the Middle East and “why not some French-speaking countries in Africa” but Laitat is not planning to expand for the sake of it.

“If someone was really begging to operate now out of Bermuda, I’m not sure I’m the right person,” he says.

Laitat was at Abelag for nearly 20 years, including for the acquisition by Luxaviation in 2013 and the purchase of ExecuJet in 2015, but left in 2021 with Willemot following closely behind.

“Let’s say that it became so big,” he says. “It’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact, it suits you or not.”

He quickly took up running AllianceJet in Malta, but the tide was pushing him towards setting up on his own and in May last year he took the plunge. Knowing he needed his team in place before he could meet with Transport Malta to apply for the AOC, he began ringing around trusted former colleagues and a number left jobs to join him. Laitat also partnered with Fiona Healy, MD, FCF Assets who “delivered impeccable guidance on all the steps needed to expedite the AOC”. The licence was signed off in seven months in February 2024.

“I wanted to have something with an amazing team, and be able to do something without any obstacles, with this passion for service,” he says. 

“The beauty of starting from scratch is we had the possibility to use these new technologies that have flourished in recent years that are all integrated. It is efficient and helps everyone.”

Freedom

A lack of transparency is one of Laitat’s bugbears in the industry and he is determined to operate differently at JetHouse.

“The way to keep the loyalty of clients is to always be able to look at yourself in the mirror,” he says. “It’s a small world and in the end, the cost of changing an owner or having plus three aircraft one year, but minus four the next, it’s not efficient.

“Of course, there are very few clients and it’s a tough business. Sometimes just to reach for a coffee with an owner, it’s the work of nine or 12 months.”

Building trust with a client leads to a “fantastic adventure for a long time”, he adds.

Laitat admits that being an entrepreneur doesn’t always come naturally but he is relishing a new adventure with JetHouse. 

“Some people are born entrepreneurs, some have to be entrepreneurs by the events of life, you know? But it’s quite fantastic to have this freedom,” he says.

The post Laitat redefines ’boutique’ with JetHouse venture appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

AMSTAT understands the challenges facing market researchers working for aircraft brokers when spending hours researching a specific market for a customer and documenting their findings using Premier’s collaboration tools. Asking prices may have been edited based on a conversation with the seller’s broker, for sale status may have been updated for a potential off-market sale and specifications like total time may have been changed based on personal knowledge. 

The firm understands the above challenges and has developed new features to address this.

First, AMSTAT Premier subscribers now have the option to have AMSTAT automatically update their edited values with the latest AMSTAT data as soon as it is available. Customers will always see the latest information when this setting is enabled and can choose to archive their edits whenever this happens so that they can review at any time.

Secondly, AMSTAT allows Premier subscribers to easily identify which of their edits have more recent data from AMSTAT. This allows customers to review their edits along with the new values from AMSTAT and choose whether to use the AMSTAT value and archive their edit or keep their edit as is.

“The combination of these new features will be a significant time saver for the aircraft broker researcher tasked with tracking multiple markets and who may be required to quickly pivot and update their work on any preowned market they previously researched.” said Andrew Young, AMSTAT general manager. “This new functionality will enable researchers to monitor more markets in a much more efficient manner.”

The company has also released a new widget, known as the “My Market Changes Tool”, which is also available to Premier subscribers and allows brokers and researchers to come back to previously researched markets and quickly review changes that have occurred since they were last in the respective model market. The widget will show a running tally of updates, including what is newly listed for sale, what has sold and which edited records have more recent AMSTAT information.

Kit Tankhiwale, AMSTAT Senior Product Innovator added: “AMSTAT knows how important it is for our customers to have the best data possible, whether it’s from AMSTAT or from their market research based on their own personal network. With these new features, our customers will be able to quickly reconcile updates in an ever-changing market and service their clients with the best information possible.”

The post AMSTAT adds new functionalities to its premier service appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

Three Gulfstream deals hit the landmark for the company which was founded in 1989 by Joseph Carfgana Sr.

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“We have always prided ourselves as being one of the brokerage firms that’s been around the longest and this number is a testament to that,” Carfagna Jr. told Corporate Jet Investor.

“We realised 1,000 was probably something that was going to happen in the next few years so we made a big deal of it.

“It was exciting to count down as we got very close, but it was just business as usual.”

‘Can’t buy experience’

 The 998^th, 999^th and 1,000th transactions were for Gulfstream G450s for repeat clients.

“In 1994 when I came onboard, we were a very different company – there was no email or internet, so everything moved at a much slower pace, but the principles of what we do are still the same,” added Carfagna Jr, who is based in New Jersey, USA.

“We put a very high importance on making our clients so happy that they’re proud to refer us to their friends.”

Among the 1000 transactions, Leading Edge has completed deals on 242 Gulfstreams, 225 Cessna Citations, 131 Hawkers, 126 Bombardier Challenger and Globals and 121 Dassault Falcons.

“[The secret is] doing things methodically and having good people. You can’t buy experience,” said Carfgana Jr.

Jack Nicklaus

His father began his life in business aviation in 1967 when he joined Bill Lear to sell new airplanes in the north east of the US. One of his first sales was to the golfer Jack Nicklaus. Carfagna Sr. set up Executive Air Fleet (EAF) in 1970 and then Wings Aviation International in 1989, which eventually became Leading Edge Aviation Solutions.

Carfagna Jr. can still remember the first deal he did after joining his father in 1994.

“It was the sale of a Citation 3,” he says. “It was a moment that I won’t forget any time soon. The person we sold it to, we have sold several more airplanes to over the years.”

After all this time in the industry, Carfagna Jr. says he is rarely fazed by anything. “There really isn’t much we haven’t seen – we’ve bought and sold airplanes all over the world, of all different types and as a result when you’ve been around this long not much comes as a surprise,” he says.

‘Needs to be sold’

Of all the deals, though, one particular transaction sticks out. “We were negotiating a deal on the sale of an airplane in September 2008, right after the financial crash, and the parties were arguing over who was to get the china and flatware in the airplane,” he says.

“I advised the client to give them everything they wanted because it was going to be worth a lot less money in a week. I think we saved the client $8m over that. If they had deliberated another few days, it probably would have fallen apart. I just remember thinking, ‘This airplane needs to be sold, the money needs to be wired asap or this deal will never happen.’”

Carfagna Jr. is “fascinated” by the technological advancements in airplanes but after hanging some old sales posters at his offices he notes that manufacturers’ ambitions haven’t changed.

“The vintage ads for airplanes in the 60s and 70s all said the same thing, ‘We will fly you more efficiently, more quietly, at a cheaper cost and faster than our competitors and that’s still what they’re striving to do. They’re just getting better and better at it.”

 For Carfagna Jr., business aviation is in the blood but while he is proud of the legacy it is the future transactions that drive him.

 “Winning the next deal is something that motivates me, all of us, and creating a happy client,” said Carfagna Jr. “Those two things are the primary drivers of what makes me tick and keep doing this.”

The post Leading Edge ‘proud’ of 1,000 aircraft transactions appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

The collaboration promises to refine the accessibility of pre-purchase inspections and data, and enhance the efficiency of service procurement exclusively for IADA members. MRO Insider will showcase IADA Members and Dealers, integrating an IADA-branded interface within the Broker Portal.

“Through enhanced connectivity with IADA, MRO Insider is adding value for the operators and flight departments who work with our dealers and MROs,” said IADA executive director Wayne Starling. “The collaboration between IADA members and MRO Insider will reduce the time spent sourcing PPI slots while the service providers gain business volume for inspections.”

On top of being distinctly highlighted, IADA-affiliated service providers will also be given precedence in search outcomes. After the aircraft transaction, IADA dealers/brokers can gift the MRO Insider app to new aircraft owners. Dealers/brokers will also have their company banner displayed within that aircraft operator’s dashboard. Finally, the MRO Insider platform will distinguish IADA service providers and dealers/brokers with an exclusive IADA emblem.

Andy Nixon, president of MRO Insider, said: “Working with Wayne, Erika Ingle, and the rest of the IADA team on this project has been a terrific experience. Our brands strive to provide business aviation with the tools, industry experts, and efficient timeframes to complete necessary tasks involving the sale and after-sale support. 

“This partnership puts us in a unique position to demonstrate and prove our value proposition to new aircraft purchasers while giving the IADA dealer/broker network peace of mind their new customers are being taken care of after the aircraft delivery.” 

The post MRO Insider Partners with IADA to Enhance Broker Portal Experience appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

The manufacturer says it is planning to deliver between 125 and 135 jets in 2024. This would be up by 10 or 20 aircraft on 2023.

The company delivered one Phenom 100 and 10 Phenom 300s in the first quarter of 2024. In the same quarter of 2023 it delivered two Phenom 100s and four Phenom 300s.

READ: Embraer Executive Jet deliveries jump 13% in 2023 

In the first three months of 2024 it delivered three Praetor 500s and four Praetor 600s. The company only delivered two Praetor 600s in the same period of 2023.

This is the most aircraft it has delivered in the first quarter for eight years.

Embraer has traditionally delivered a large proportion of aircraft in the fourth quarter. In the first quarter of 2023 it shipped eight business jets, in the second 30 and the third 28 aircraft. In the last three months of the year it delivered 40% of the year’s total with 49 jets. The manufacturer says it is now working on a Production Levelling Plan to have a stable production pace throughout the year.

The manufacturer shipped 115 executive jets in 2023 – up 13 from 102. This consisted of 63 Phenom 300s, 11 Phenom 100s, 20 Praetor 500s and 21 Praetor 600s.

The post Embraer grows first quarter deliveries and backlog appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

The Global 7000/8000 aircraft has a total of 39 aircraft announced orders after the 2011 Paris Air Show. Currently there are seven known orders for the Global 7000 with an order from NetJets for 20 aircraft, where Netjets has yet to determine what number of each aircraft it needs. The Global 7000’s main selling point is space not speed or range.

Hard Facts

Range: 9,098 miles/14,631 kms/7,900 nautical miles
Typical passengers: 8 (typical) – 19 (high density)
Typical crew:  2 – 4
Cabin space: 2,236 ft3 / 63.32 m3
Maximum Speed: 594 mph/957 kmph/mach 0.90  
Recommended cruise: 564 mph/907 kmph/mach 0.85
Competitor aircraft: Challenger 850ER, Global 5000, Global 6000, Global 7000, Falcon 900DX, Falcon 900EX EASy, Falcon 7X, Gulfstream G500, G550, G650
How much does a new Global 8000 cost? $65m
First delivery: 2016
Aircraft manufacturer: Bombardier
Engine manufacturer: General Electric
Engine type (number): GE Passport (2)

More Bombardier Guides:

Global 7500

Global 5000

Learjet 75

Learjet 70

Challenger 850

Challenger 605

Challenger 350

The post Bombardier Global 8000: Buyer’s and Investor’s Guide appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.