Sounding Board: Five Minutes With XOJet Aviation President, COO Kevin Thomas

Q. As an on-demand provider, XOJet Aviation is adding aircraft to its fleet as demand increases. What is your growth plan? 

A. Pre-COVID, our plan had always been to grow the fleet, but COVID obviously put a roadblock in that growth. Over the course of the last couple of months, we’ve seen a significant return and demand for business aviation. 

Q. What does that mean for the company? 

A. It seemed prudent and the timing seemed to be appropriate to begin conversations about those growth plans again. As a part of that, the first phase of those growth plans is adding to our existing fleet. We have an immediate need based on the current demand to start those growth plans and put (them) back into action.

Q. How many aircraft will you add?

A. We’re looking at four aircraft initially, but have plans over the next 18 to 24 months to take somewhere between 10 and 20 additional aircraft. That will slide depending on how we see demand continue and what that growth looks like. This is consistent with what our plans were at the beginning of the year. 

Q. You mentioned that two of the four aircraft additions are pending—a Citation X and a Challenger 300. What about the rest and how large is your fleet now?

A. We’ve got a portfolio of additional aircraft on the market that we’re currently evaluating. We want to be smart. Currently at 40 aircraft, we are actively engaged at looking at adding a minimum of two more in the near term. For the XOJet Aviation fleet specifically, our goal is between 50 and 55 aircraft when it’s all said and done.

Q. You mentioned that you are experiencing a V-shaped bounce back with demand. What are you seeing in the market? 

A. We have seen a number of new clients, new to XOJet Aviation, but also new to business aviation in general. Clients who maybe had always had the means to fly business aviation or leverage the business aviation infrastructure but had traditionally flown first class are making the switch. (They also had) the need to get into operations where maybe commercial air travel has either ceased or has been significantly reduced. Our existing clients are starting to come back as well. It’s really a combination of all those factors that play into what I would call a V-shaped bounce back in demand. 

Q. Is business back to pre-pandemic levels?

A. I would say from a fleet utilization and hours (perspective), we are back. The second piece of that is what we call the yield or the price that we’re able to generate in the market, and the pricing is not fully recovered yet. From a fleet perspective and number of hours we are putting into the fleet, we’re definitely back. We’ve still got a way to go in terms of the revenue per flight hour; however, our projections show that we’ll be able to achieve that sometime in mid-to-late Q4 or early Q1 2021. 

Q. What’s been the effect of the pandemic on your employees and how have you had to adjust? 

A. Everything you might expect–new procedures and protocols in the way we clean our aircraft to our offices to social distancing requirements. We were fortunate enough and made the decision early on to invest in our employees to ride this out. We never furloughed or laid anyone off. Some in nonoperational positions have been able to work from home, but largely, the mission-critical operations folks have all remained in the office and continued to work full time. 

Q. Do you think those moving from the airlines to private aviation will remain or return to the airlines once airline travel rebounds? 

A. I believe that those people who have come to business aviation and understand the flexibility and freedom it provides, as well as in the case of not having to be in a large airport with hundreds or thousands of people that you don’t know, provides a sense of security that I think the airlines will just never be able to provide post-COVID. There may come a point where the balance, that equilibrium between commercial and private aviation that was similar to what it was pre-COVID returns, but I don’t see that being the case for at least a couple of years, if not longer. 

Q. What are you seeing in the availability of pilots today? Not long ago, forecasts predicted a pilot shortage. Today, U.S. airlines that accepted government payroll aid are banned from job cuts before Sept. 30. But that day is coming, and some carriers are warning they may be forced to shrink. 

A. I think there are a number of pilots out there in the commercial space that have received furlough notices and are waiting for October 1st to come around. We don’t have a lot of positions, but we are hiring on the pilot side. Where we may have seen hundreds of applications before, we’re now seeing thousands. 

Q. What do you advise young people wanting to pursue a dream as a professional pilot to do in this environment? 

A. If it’s your dream and desire to become a commercial or corporate aviation pilot, go for it, do it. While (the pandemic is) having an immediate impact on the markets and the economies, human beings innately love to travel and the globalization of our economy is such that travel is not going away. COVID is going to be a moment in history when things slow down, but it’s not going to stop the continued progression of travel. In the end, these jobs will come back.