Special Reports: PrivatAir

Interview with PrivatAir President/CEO, Greg Thomas & Senior Vice President, Selection, Training & Customer Service, Victor Grove

Greg Thomas, a British gentleman with a sense of adventure, became legal counsel for PrivatAir back in 1994 and subsequently joined the Shareholder Group. With true entrepreneurial spirit, he has travelled a direct route within the company since then: he became Member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors in 1998, was then appointed Chief Operating Officer of the PrivatAir Group in January 2001, Chief Executive Officer in February 2003 and finally President & CEO in 2009. Greg holds a private pilot’s license, allowing him to exercise his passion for flying not just in his day job but also in the air.

Victor Grove is one of the faces of PrivatAir, having been with the company since 1992 when he joined as head of cabin crew. Vice President Selection, Training and Customer Service, Victor’s one of those buoyant, multi-faceted individuals who knows how to get the best out of people. As a result, his responsibilities in the areas of customer service, corporate image and training have never ceased to evolve and grow and he has played a key role in transforming the company from a corporate air fleet to a fully commercial operation.

Tell me a little bit about PrivatAir and what the company offers.

Greg Thomas (GT): Historically, PrivatAir has earned its reputation as one of the leaders in business aviation by providing premium transport solutions to high net-worth individuals, royalty, heads of states and of course to sports teams and stars. Over the last ten years, we have also developed our Scheduled Services, providing flexible solutions for commercial airlines.

And what about yourself? How did you become involved in PrivatAir?

GT: I came to Geneva in 1994 as a young lawyer, there were none of these grey hairs back in those days! I was working for John Latsis and in my first week at his head office, I was handed the file entitled PrivatAir – a small airline owned by his group that flew the company’s personnel around. The shareholders had decided to go commercial and to sell their business aviation services. So my first contact with PrivatAir was to fill in the form to give to the authorities for certification – quite a milestone! Slowly but surely I became more and more involved, first as the company’s lawyer, then on the Board of Directors. Finally, after six years working at head office, I took a leap of faith and asked for a demotion so I could come and run PrivatAir. I got the nod of approval. Sure, it was a bit of a surprise for everyone at PrivatAir when I came in, in January 2001, with a new vision for the company, but we all quickly found our pace.

Back in 2001 what was the biggest challenge for you at PrivatAir and how did you overcome any problems you encountered?

GT: It was interesting to come into a company that had started out as a private operation. There were very high standards. The shareholder group in place did a lot of business with some very high-profile people. The founder of the company, John Latsis, counted among his personal friends Margaret Thatcher, Prince Charles, Lady Diana and George Bush to name a few and they travelled frequently with PrivatAir. We developed a service culture that was designed to meet the expectations of people of such stature. Coming into a business with such a client list and exceptionally high standards was very interesting for me.

However the business at the time was not commercially viable. When I came in, that was my biggest challenge: to make PrivatAir into a profitable, stand-alone business. There were changes at many levels and an overall culture change that took some time to settle. In addition, just as we were going through these changes, the terrible events of 9/11 occurred. The economy went into spiral and the aviation industry in particular sunk into a deep recession.

Still, after two or three years, our efforts paid off and we managed to turn the business around and to move into the black. I am happy to say that we continue to make money in what is still a very tough business and industry environment.

Focusing in on the now, what are the biggest challenges you are currently facing?

GT: We are based in Europe and we work in an industry that, despite what you might think, is actually somewhat geographically limited. The European economy is still very fragile and airlines are struggling. We have had to look outside of Europe to continue to grow our business. Because of this we have been flying in Africa now for the last two years. You have to ‘adapt or die’ as they say. We couldn’t find the business we needed in Europe, so we went to get it in Africa and the Middle East. We are thriving in those areas now. We have also diversified our product line, selling fuel for example through PrivatJetFuel.

You have flown a number of sports teams around the world. What challenges do you face with sports teams that you would not encounter with other clients?

GT: It depends on which sport you are working with. Some of the sports can have different amounts of equipment that they travel with. We used to do some charters in the States. If you take an ice hockey team for example, the size of the kit they travel with is a significant challenge to the cargo capacity of your plane. Soccer teams and players travel with a lot less gear and generally, all sport teams are very well organised when they fly.

Victor Grove (VG): I think it would be fair to say the challenges for us also depend on the size of the sports club. The bigger the club, the more people come along with them and the more journalists they will attract. For example, travelling anywhere in the world with Manchester United or Arsenal means, as you can imagine, that there will be a lot of attention. With smaller clubs, the departure and arrivals will be somewhat less challenging, but otherwise our involvement doesn’t vary, we attach the same importance to the service we provide to every client. Our attention to detail is always 100%.

You have flown Juventus a number of times – is that a formed partnership or do you normally enter into one-off deals?

VG: When I first started looking into football teams for PrivatAir in the ‘90s, I went on a tour of England to attract interest. Being British and an ex-football player, it made sense to start with what I knew! We had the advantage that we could offer 50-seater planes. There aren’t that many 50-seater planes in the world, believe it or not. It was the kind of size the football teams were looking at for European travel. I was fortunate to know some people in the football business, who were interested, so I had my foot in the door.  Then I started going along to events, meeting a lot of sporting people. That’s how it works. Before we knew it we were flying the England team to Trinidad on our 767!

A lot of the clubs will tie-up with somebody at the start of the season and will have a partner for the Champions League, whereas we do a lot of pre-season flights.

Greg Thomas (GT): Truth be told, the Champions League is not the most lucrative venture for us because the flights are short and quick. The teams tend to take those flights with companies that have smaller airplanes and are based locally, or else they go with a company they are partnered with. The kind of tours we arrange are long distance and will often go half-way around the world. It’s a more interesting business proposition for us, and also more of a challenge, which we enjoy.

VG: All in all, we deal with a lot of different situations with the sports clubs. Some clubs don’t want to fly with customers, some do, some will allow media on board, some will keep it private. Generally, if the media come along, they sit at the back and they get charged.

GT: We certainly see a lot of different approaches! For example some clubs will like the 50-seater planes and keep to themselves, while others would rather have a 120-seater airplane so they can sell seats to high-end fans.

Why did you go into sports and how did the first sport deal arise?

VG: The first deal was with Leeds United for one of their Champions League games. I saw them during my tour of the UK and they didn’t have a travel supplier. It was back in 2000, they signed up our 48-seater for four or five years, a great deal!

Are you looking to expand further into the sports industry?

GT: We have a 44-seat airplane coming back to Europe on the 1^st January 2014 and that will be available in the ad-hoc charter market. With that airplane we will be vigorously attacking the sports team market.