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Jeremy Kariuki:
Hello and welcome to the BCA podcast by Aviation Week. I'm your host, Jeremy Kariuki, associate Editor for Business Aviation. This week we're speaking with AXIS Aviation CEO, Niall Olver, and accountable manager, Kerstin Mumenthaler, about their company's growth and impact in the European market. As a reminder, if you'd like to support the show, please consider subscribing, following, or rating us wherever you listen. Enjoy the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Niall Olver:
Only a pleasure. Nice to meet.

Jeremy Kariuki:
To start out with, what are some of the challenges that are specific to the European business aviation industry?

Niall Olver:
Well, firstly, I would say that the one big issue in Europe is the fragmentation. It's a very fragmented industry. Of course, that's also the case worldwide, but I think particularly in Europe where you have different jurisdictions and particularly now with the European Union not including the UK, and of course you've got Switzerland, you've got San Marino. So I think a regulatory complexity is one, and the second one probably is just the environment is more complex than, say, the US. You've got slot times, you've got airport slots, which you don't have in the US.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And how does AXIS aviation, how has its approach been to the European aviation industry been?

Niall Olver:
Well, I think the approach in the first instance is very similar to most other aircraft management companies. And the reason being is if we started the business in order to try out... Well, not try out to try and develop a new business model, which incorporates technology from the outset. So in the first instance, we are still operating fairly traditionally, but the big aspiration is to make a fundamental change in terms of how the industry works in terms of transparency particularly, and also efficiency.

Jeremy Kariuki:
So you say a fundamental change. Could you elaborate on that?

Niall Olver:
Well, the industry is particularly intransparent. I don't think you always see best practices. There's a lot of operators that particularly are not necessarily wanting there to be transparency with the aircraft owners because it provides an opportunity to maybe shift the weight of benefit onto their side. My personal belief is that it's long overdue. If we look at the industry beyond the industry today, everything is transparent. Everything is app based, everything is moving towards a commoditized environment. So I think we can bring to bear the current technologies that are available to us, integrate best practices into that. We can provide a far more transparent environment for the aircraft owners and make it a lot more efficient to operate.

Jeremy Kariuki:
So when it comes to transparency and efficiency, as you've mentioned, what role does automation play in your services? And is there emergent technology like AI involved?

Niall Olver:
AI is probably, it's a big term, but I think in the first instance it's really a bit about data science and creating a data warehouse. So something like ForeFlight for example, is very clearly a prevalent technology in the industry in this area. You get accounting packages that are today widely used internationally. Typically, these become siloed environments in an aircraft management company and you don't really have a good cross flow of information. So our philosophy is to build a data layer in which we can API all these best practices, and through that you can start working with the data. You get a lot more granularity. You can start doing front end type applications, which you couldn't do, what you can't do today without having that sort of benefit of a data warehouse.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And how do you plan to grow AXIS Aviation in the European region and abroad?

Niall Olver:
Well, our first aspiration is to become efficient at what we do here in Europe. We have an AOC in Switzerland, we have an AOC in Austria, we are in the process of obtaining an AOC in San Marino. We are also in the process of opening an operation in the Middle East out of Dubai. So I think the first instance, we'd like to prove our technology to ourselves internally in terms of efficiency and demonstrate the benefit to owners in terms of transparency. And once that's done, we'll look to grow further. And of course, the most attractive market beyond Europe is the US.

Jeremy Kariuki:
Is this effort towards transparency, a response to a certain lack of transparency in the industry? Is this something that consumers have been wanting to see more of?

Niall Olver:
Most definitely I think. I've been doing various businesses within corporate aviation within Europe, in fact internationally for many, many years. And the one thing that's always struck me is the intransparency of the industry at many different levels. So I think that really is very close to my heart to try and find a way to change that paradigm.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And of course, the industry is trying to move towards net zero carbon emissions. How is AXIS Aviation tackling that struggle?

Niall Olver:
Well, again, we're using technology to large degree to try and link in the various stakeholders in the process because there's no silver bullet in the classical term is green washing. So we going to try level best to bring about an ability to interface actual projects, actual projects internationally with the aircraft owner directly and not just through third party platforms.

Jeremy Kariuki:
So how exactly does your company's approach to aircraft management differ from the competition?

Niall Olver:
I think the basic foundation is the same. Managing an aircraft requires the same functions, whether you're doing it in this company or that company, the manner in which we're going to do it is going to be through the technology platform. So we'll enable captains, pilots to make a much more decisions than they can today because they don't have the ability at their fingertips today, but they're on site or they're facing the problems firsthand. So they are actually the best person to solve them. And again, the only way to do that is to use technology to bring about an ability for them to actually make decisions, real time communicate for the owner, the passenger at real time. So I think that's one fundamental difference that we'll see fairly soon.

Jeremy Kariuki:
2024 is expected to be an exciting year for a lot of different sectors of the business aviation industry. What is your personal outlook for the European business aviation industry in 2024?

Niall Olver:
I'm not pessimistic at all. If you look at the fundamental growth drivers in the industry broadly, but of course that flows into corporate aviation. I'm pretty encouraged by it. But personally, I do believe that 2024 will be a rather flat year. I don't particularly expect to see big growth in the industry in 2024, but that's just a personal view.

Jeremy Kariuki:
All right. Well, thank you so much again for joining with me today. It's been a pleasure.

Niall Olver:
Okay, only a pleasure. Nice speaking to you.

Jeremy Kariuki:
All right. Well, Kerstin, thank you for joining me today.

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure being here.

Jeremy Kariuki:
So before we begin, could you tell me about what you do with AXIS Aviation and how you came into that role?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Actually, I'm the accountable manager for AXIS Aviation, Switzerland and San Marino. And my background is that I'm a pilot. So I used to say that my vocation is being a pilot and my passion is the management around all the staff. And that is also the explanation how I came into AXIS Aviation because I can do there both being a pilot and managing the entire thing.

Jeremy Kariuki:
Generally, how did the European business aviation industry perform last year as compared to previous years?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Well, let's clearly say the 2020 started quite challenging with the pandemic, with the Covid and still 2023 was challenging for all industries, but not for a lack of passengers or a lack of business, but with the ongoing fallout, especially in the supply chain. So we are facing challenges in getting aircraft parts back. The maintenance things are a lot longer than in the years before. So these are still challenges. But I think especially the business aviation has shown that we are quite resilient into that. So we went through those challenging years quite good and we in the forecast for the next year is very good, I would say.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And on that note, how do you expect the industry to change throughout the course of 2024?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
I think there is some kind of uncertainty into the geopolitical situation, of course, but looking into it from our perspective, we would see quite a good progress and an ongoing charter demand especially in the business aviation sector at the moment.

Jeremy Kariuki:
On that geopolitical note, I know as war in Gaza goes on and as the Russian Ukraine continues, how did those specific situations affect the broader market in that region?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Well, clearly there are these sanctions against passengers with Russian citizenships and passports. So we of course lack all those passengers who were good passengers before those crisis started. But in an overall perspective, in a worldwide situation seen the gap is not as big as we might have expected in the beginning.

Jeremy Kariuki:
Moving on, what technological advancements or regulatory changes have happened in recent memory in the European market that operators should be aware of?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Well, we all talk about digitalization and when I started in aviation some 20 years ago, I would say we clearly did the same processes like we do nowadays, just that we put the papers into the iPad, but we didn't change the processes itself. And with the developments of the previous months, especially last year with ChatGPT and all those artificial intelligence tools, I think we are facing now the real change into the digitalization. And so we and the entire industry, we have to be prepared for that change.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And how does AXIS Aviation's aircraft management differ from other operations on that level?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
I think especially that we already observed that challenge and that it is the vision of AXIS Aviation, especially to put all our aircraft management into that new digital world so that we have all the data available, everybody has the data available, but we leverage them now. So we build a platform where we put all those data together where we can ensure them to the owner, to the pilots, to everybody involved, and real time 24/7, very transparent process about what the aircraft is doing actually.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And is this scalable to wider portions of the BizAz market, say with growth in the UAM and AAM sectors, what kind of impact does this management have?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
My personal opinion is that this will be the game changer, and this is scalable for sure, because we look at now on the very regulated European market where we develop it. And then when we go wider international, especially to the US where we have less regulations, but a lot more business aviation traffic, this is scalable and this will make the difference in the end.

Jeremy Kariuki:
And is there anything that we haven't touched on yet that you would love to include?

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Transparency. So that is clearly our goal, our vision behind AXIS Aviation. It's all about transparency. We really want to make the owner, especially, aware of all the costs of the benefits, of the chances of his own aircraft, and that is workable and that's manageable with our platform we are developing.

Jeremy Kariuki:
Well, Kerstin, thank you so much for joining me.

Kerstin Mumenthaler:
Thank you very much.

Jeremy Kariuki:
Thanks for listening to the BCA podcast by Aviation Week Network. This week's episode was produced by Andrea Copley Smith. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to or follow us on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to support us, please leave a rating wherever you listen. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.