A first widebody completion transforms the VIP airliner world

With its distinctive Comlux Angel flag flying in the U.S., Malta, Aruba, San Marino, and Kazakhstan, and at its Zurich, Switzerland headquarters, Comlux the Aviation Group’s global leadership—“the 10 fingers,” as chairman and CEO Richard Gaona calls the tight-knit executive team—is rarely together in one place. But in late March the division leaders stood on the tarmac at Comlux Completion in Indianapolis watching a VIP Airbus A330, freshly outfitted with a Comlux custom luxury interior, taxi out for its first certification test flight.

For the VIP airline operator and services provider, the completion represents several milestones: for one thing, it’s the company’s first wide-body project, and it elevates Comlux to a new tier in the VIP airliner world. As Gaona noted, “The number of centers that can perform a widebody completion is extremely limited.”

The project also marks the implementation of Comlux Tech, a new process that integrates expertise from across all Comlux offerings to serve each client’s needs, and demonstrates the breadth of its bespoke services, a combination of capabilities that has established the company as VIP aviation’s undisputed supergroup.

“The 330 shows our competencies, from transactions to completions and operations,” said Gaona sometime after midnight, as he and all hands relaxed following the successful conclusion of the aircraft’s 14 hour-plus test flight. He recapped the project’s history in explanation: “We decided to buy a widebody for our charter airline. We found and bought the aircraft, we brought it here for completion, we designed the interior, and we installed the cabin. Then a customer came and wanted it, so we sold it. Now we will operate it for the customer.”

The widebody news complements the company’s growing recognition as a center of excellence for next-generation single-aisle airliner completions. The conference room window that framed Gaona that night overlooked the facility’s vast completion bay, where the world’s first BBJ Max 8, received in February, and the first VVIP ACJ320 neo, inducted in March, were visible behind him, their completions well underway. The complex is an Airbus- and Boeing-approved completion center, and a Bombardier Authorized Service Facility.

In many ways, the purpose-built facility, designed to optimize the completion process, and the structure of the Comlux Group mirror each other: all disciplines and skills, mutually supportive, are under one roof.

Though completions and refurbishment services were part of its long-term plan, Comlux was founded in 2003 as a VIP aircraft operator and management and transactional firm.

Engineering Luxury

Today Comlux Aviation, its operations division, is the world’s largest operator of VIP airliners, leveraging more than 15 years of experience flying the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals around the globe with assurance of luxury, security, and reliability. With aircraft operator certificates (AOCs) from Malta, Aruba, San Marino, Switzerland, and, through its subsidiary, Kazakhstan, Comlux Aviation can ensure that each aircraft is registered and operated under provisions most beneficial to their owners’ needs and goals. The experience is invaluable in the completions process, as well.

“It happens many times that we take part in the design of the cabin,” said Andrea Zanetto, CEO of Comlux Aviation. “We have the operational experience and the feedback from the clients that fly on our aircraft for charter, and from the owners of the aircraft we manage.”

As a Continuing Airworthiness Maintenance Organization (CAMO)—maintaining as well as operating VIP transport-category platforms—the Comlux division offers owners unrivaled experience and knowledge in servicing and protecting the value of these assets with cost-effective solutions. “We are very cost conscious as a company,” Zanetto said. “Even if we are in VIP aviation.”

Comlux Aviation registers its VIP widebodies—including its own B767 and a client’s all-first-class B777—in Aruba. It’s the only registry with provisions facilitating private VIP charter operations of wide-body aircraft. Comlux has been there since 2011.

The company operates its single-aisle VIP airliners under Maltese registry. Though Malta is now a popular location for business aircraft registration, Comlux was the first operator to register business aircraft there.

Transactions are a key component in the Comlux growth strategy, as the company often manages the aircraft it helps clients acquire. As with operations and maintenance experience, the Group’s transactional expertise—particularly buying for its own fleet—pays dividends beyond its benefits to buyers and sellers. As an OEM customer, Comlux has access to resources, data, and expertise that are unavailable to many other service providers.

“We have the enormous advantage of buying aircraft from Airbus, from Boeing, and from Bombardier—and we are operating their aircraft,” said Arnaud Martin, COO of Comlux Management. “The relationship an aircraft manufacturer has with an owner or an operator is entirely different from the relationship with a maintenance facility.”

The completion project for Slice of Life, as Comlux dubbed the VIP A330, provided the opportunity and impetus to bring all these capabilities together in a formalized process.

Comlux names the aircraft whose interiors it creates, reflecting its motif or theme. It chose Slice of Life to express the aircraft’s and life’s perfection, which a fortunate few can experience during the sliver of their existence spent onboard.

Under the banner of engineering luxury—harnessing all the best technical expertise available in the service of creating an ultimate personalized luxury interior—Comlux Completion has a track record of introducing innovation while consistently delivering aircraft under mandated weight and sound levels, on time and on budget. At least three new innovations or improvements are found in every completion. The A330 created fresh opportunities and demands to expand the design envelope.

“Because the aircraft is bigger, the cabin is wider, customers are asking for more,” said Gaona. “And we are here to engineer luxury.”

But the scale creates challenges, as well. “When you’re working in a widebody, you get three times more size to populate the cabin with innovations,” said Daron Dryer, CEO of Comlux Completion, “but you have to ensure you have the right resources, planning, and supply-chain management, so the product doesn’t take three times as long to deliver.”

Early in planning, leadership realized, “Having the same group of technical experts supporting this type of project is a great advantage,” said Martin. “So, we created Comlux Tech—we have pilots, CAMO people, maintenance specialists from Comlux Aviation and Comlux Completion, and engineers from Comlux Completion, all under the same umbrella. We’re using the power of our synergies for the benefit of all our customers, whether it’s here in Indianapolis, in Malta, during a transaction or maintenance, anywhere in the world.”

Added Zanetto, “We do not work separately in silos anymore.”

Indeed, Comlux Aviation “got involved when the [A330] project started,” said Zanetto, the division’s technical experts sourcing the aircraft from the commercial fleet, reviewing logs and maintenance records, and later having its pilots fly candidate aircraft, ensuring an ideal airframe was selected. Preliminary engineering and design work was already underway at Comlux Completion. Thanks to technology upgrades introduced with the company’s Comlux 3.0 initiative, all processes are digitally driven, making access to the aircraft almost superfluous until it’s time to install the cabin components.

Extraordinary Experience

For Slice of Life, “the main concept was to create a five-star hotel experience,” said Dryer. That extraordinary experience begins at the circular entryway, featuring a domed latticework ceiling of custom-cut glass and one of the innovations: curved pocket doors, which remove any suggestion of the tubular frame of the surrounding structure. The cabin innovations also include a 52-inch curved screen monitor in the rear bar lounge, its contour perfectly matching that of the wall behind it, and a new ultra-quiet wide-body air conditioning air distribution system. For a VIP area, engineers designed a custom pod system for seats that are “beyond first-class,” Dryer said. Passengers can exercise on equipment in the spa to keep fit on 16-hour-plus flights. Yet the interior weighs about 5,000 kg less than that of a commercial A330.

Slice of Life’s completion marks another milestone for Comlux Completion, coinciding with the divisions 10th anniversary. But with the two Next-Gen single-aisles in the hangar and more slated for induction, Comlux is looking ahead. Group board member and Comlux Completion executive president Domingo Ureña, who served as CEO of several major Airbus subsidiaries, including its military aircraft division, noted similarities between the military and VIP markets: “We configured the [military] aircraft to the specific demands and requirements of each customer,” said Ureña. “The platform is the same, but each set of aircraft is different.”

Ureña came to Comlux with a mandate “to help the organization continuously improve, to be more competitive, and to be number-one in the market.” Meanwhile, Gaona is clear on the company’s direction. “I’m known to be a hard competitor,” he said. “I want 50 percent of the market share of Neo and Max in completion in this facility. And now from the facility we can do any 330 and [Boeing] Triple 7, and if one day, something happens, we have the space to put a 747 inside.”