Business pleasure

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This article was published 08/10/2016 (3615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fast Air knows all about how to make a private jet make sense for business.

Now it wants to get Winnipeggers to use them for fun, as well.

The privately owned charter and corporate jet operator has been expanding its business aviation operation since 1995. It now has a fleet of about 12 Beechcraft King Air turbo-prop planes and about eight Gulfstream and Westwind corporate jets it staffs, operates and does all of the maintenance on for Manitoba businesses that own those jets.

 

This fall, the company is hoping to entice individuals to partake in the private-jet experience.

It has just launched a new division, called Jaunt, offering short excursions to out-of-town sporting and concert events.

So far, Jaunt has organized a number of trips to Minnesota Wild and Viking games in Minneapolis as well as Grey Cup and Super Bowl packages for groups of six to eight people.

The Minneapolis trips, including tickets to the game, start around $1,000 per person.

Those ones don’t include accommodations because Fast Air will get you home by the end of the day.

“This is different for us; it’s focused on the consumer,” said Dan Rutherford, Fast Air’s marketing and business development director. “It could be (used as) an incentive for employees, customer appreciation or just a group of buddies.”

Rutherford said the company is in the early phase with this new offering, feeling its way into this market and working with Winnipeg ticket-procurement company RoadTrips to design excursions.

Over the years, Fast Air has built what is now an integrated aviation/aerospace operation with lots of private charter capacity, turnkey corporate jet management and a growing maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business that includes third-party avionics installation for the GPS technology company Garmin.

So while it doesn’t really have experience in the hospitality business, it is very skilled at growing and leveraging the expertise and assets at its disposal. 

Launching the new Jaunt service arose partly out of efforts to get its fleet of King Air planes to work on the weekends when business charter demand falls off.

Anthony Dyck, Fast Air’s general manager and second in command to owner and CEO Dylan Fast, said, “The planes don’t make money if they’re on the ground.”

It’s not just about providing transportation to a special event out of town. It’s about getting folks there in style. 

“We’re adding that other element of travel — the private business aircraft, private terminal, VIP treatment,” said Rutherford.

“Our jet owners are used to a level of service,” said Dyck. “We have great pilots who understand the customer service side of things. We can leverage that and give the average person the experience of that kind of (private business) travel.” 

The company has about 100 employees, including 45 pilots.

A year ago, it acquired the former Esso Avitat, a private jet terminal and fueling centre.

That means Fast Air is more intimately linked into the private-jet travel network that includes more than 1,400 business aviation aircraft in Canada alone.

“You would be surprised at the kind of people coming in and out,” Rutherford said, mentioning a recent trip by the CEO of Costco. “That all goes on under the radar.”

The addition of the Jaunt operations will bring in another new line of business and will also add economies of scale. 

They may very well be right to think consumers are looking for that kind of travel if the growth in private business-jet usage is any indication.

Fast Air got its first contract to operate a private business for a Winnipeg company in 1999. It now provides total turnkey support for six Gulfstream and Westwind jets and maintenance on another two for companies such as Bison Transport, Winpak and the North West Company.

Rudy Toering, president and CEO of the Ottawa-based Canadian Business Aviation Association, said corporate jet usage in Manitoba and Saskatchewan is up even though the downturn in the oilpatch has flattened out national growth in the field.

“Over the years, people have come to realize that the perception that (private or corporate jets) is a rich-boy thing… is not the story of business aviation,” Toering said.

“These companies use their aircraft for business purposes, not for pleasure.”

Paul Cunningham, the CEO of WGI Westman, agrees with that analysis wholeheartedly.

“It has been transformational for us,” Cunningham said of the company’s ownership of an Israeli-made Westwind jet operated by Fast Air. “Our plane gets zero personal use. It is only a tool for business.”

WGI Westman, a privately owned culvert and steel fabricator, has about 30 locations across Canada and in the U.S., many of them in such places as Swift Current, Lethbridge, Cambridge, Ont., Dawson Creek, B.C., and Storm Lake, Iowa.

“When I look at where our facilities are… we’re not going to New York or downtown Toronto,” he said.

“I can do in one day (with the jet) what would take me two weeks (otherwise).” 

Cunningham said 10 years ago, he might have balked at the argument it was an important business asset, but he’s now convinced it’s made their organization leaner and more responsive.

Mentioning locations in Genelle, Dawson Creek, Prince George, Grand Prairie, he said without a corporate jet, the Winnipeg-based company executives might have been able to visit those places only once every three or four years. Now there is at least annual visits. “People need to feel connected, they need to feel part of the organization,” he said.

He also admitted upgrading to the Westwind jet (Bison’s former jet) from a previous King Air turbo prop might have helped with corporate self-image.

“One day, we were taking off in the King Air to Edmonton,” he said.

“The Bison jet was on the runway with no one in it. When we landed in Edmonton, the Bison jet was sitting on tarmac with no one in it. They passed us.” 

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca