Lenexa, Kansas-based Airshare is celebrating its 20th anniversary and an expanded range of services, now including on-demand charter, aircraft management, and maintenance, along with its Embark jet card and flagship days-based fractional ownership program.
The company’s 2018 rebranding as Airshare (née Executive AirShare) underscored its widening customer base and services and “blended solution” approach, said president and CEO John Owen who succeeded company cofounder Keith Plumb as president and CEO in 2018.
Starting with one Beechcraft King Air 350 in Wichita in 2000, Airshare now has 19 bases across the nation’s midsection—from Denver to as far east as New York state, from Texas’s major cities to Chicago and Milwaukee, and a dozen places in between. Meanwhile, its fractional and jet card fleet has evolved, and today features Embraer Phenom 100 and 300 light jets; Airshare was the Part 135 and fractional program launch customer for the Embraer platforms in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
It’s noteworthy that neither founding CEO Bob Taylor (now chairman) nor Owen had any aviation experience prior to involvement with what is today Airshare. Taylor, a “finance guy” with public companies, was asked in 1998 to help sell an FBO and certified repair station after the owner—a friend—died in an airplane crash. As Taylor learned how the business operated, “I just fell in love with the industry,” he recalled, and after the sale, investigated launching a fractional program in the mold of the then-fledgling NetJets. His market research consisted primarily of asking potential customers two key questions: Where do people go and how long do they stay there?
Taylor learned that the vast majority of flights were between 300 and 700 nm and that “most customers’ travel is what you call 'out and back'—stay one or two days” and return. Based on this feedback, he launched Executive AirShare, but rather than offering customers a set number of flight hours per year based on the size of their share, Airshare provided a set number of days.
Whereas standard fractional programs allot owners 50 hours annually for the minimum 1/16th aircraft share, for example, Airshare’s 1/16th share provides 20 days, with no limits on daily flight hours (other than 14-hour crew duty day rules); its Embark jet card also provides days of access rather than hours (10 days over two years for the Phenom 100, 20 days during that period for the Phenom 300). The days-based plan can provide significantly more flying time and lower hourly costs than hour-based programs, said Owen. “We have several customers who fly well over 100 hours [annually] on a 1/16th share.”
The big savings come from taking advantage of discount rates. Airshare’s standard hourly (or one-way) rate applies to any trip that begins and ends in different locations; the Express (or round-trip) rate provides a flat 35 percent discount for trips that begin and end in the same place. If a customer flies multiple legs in one day, for example, spends the night at the last destination, and the next day flies multiple legs from that last destination, returning to the previous day’s point of departure, all the flight time over the two days would qualify for the Express rate.
Together, the discount rates and daily access allowance can lower the costs of both the Phenom 100 and 300 to the $2,000-per-hour range for fractional owners. (Airshare doesn’t disclose pricing or fees for the Embark jet card, but said costs can also dip to the $2,000-per-hour level when deployed efficiently; customer deposits can be escrowed.)
Airshare’s regional service model and floating fleet help keep operating costs down. To support growth, the company establishes bases in locations with enough potential shareowners and a quality of life that crews would enjoy.
“We like the hubs,” said Owen. “We create customer-density in areas we service; at the same time, we’re building pilot density. Customers see the same pilots over and over, and it starts to feel like their airplane.
“We’ll fly out of anywhere,” he added, “But we don’t want to fly empty to a location to pick up customers—somebody’s paying for that.”
Owen joined Executive AirShare as CFO in 2016 as Taylor sold controlling interest, arriving from the trucking industry. “I realized how closely related trucking and aviation are from a financial perspective,” he recalled, noting that they’re both logistics enterprises at heart. “Instead of trucks you have airplanes; instead of cargo you have passengers, and the drivers are pilots.” The objectives are also identical: “Creating efficiencies and reducing costs, and passing them on to customers.”
He inherited a “complicated fleet mix,” and after analyzing missions and operational data, the team determined that Airshare could fulfill 98 percent of trip requests with just the Phenom 100 and 300 and began culling other models from the fleet. Today it consists of 13 Phenom 300s (including the updated 300e, with more on order) and nine Phenom 100s, almost all bought new; the average age is less than seven years, the oldest is 11, and the planned replacement cycle is about 13 years.
Meanwhile, Airshare’s management business dates back to 2008, when it purchased Texas-based Executive Flight (now officially part of the company, as per the rebranding). Part 135 approval came in 2001, when Taylor bought the business he groomed for sale three years prior and whose operating certificate he’d helped secure. Today Airshare operates about 25 managed aircraft, including Citation XLSs, Embraer Legacys, and Bombardier Challengers, with plans to expand its midsize jet management and charter business “in the next year or two,” Taylor said.
“We do have customers who have grown from the Phenom 300," he added. "If a fourth of their flying is on a midsize, we can adequately handle them with chartering. Or, if they have a lot of flying, we can help find them the aircraft they want and manage it, and put charter hours on it to help offset costs." Though charter has traditionally represented a small portion of Airshare's business, demand is “growing and especially relevant as we manage [more] midsize aircraft.”
The company's operations received Argus's Platinum safety rating in 2018 and IS-BAO Stage 3 registration in 2020. Airshare is also raising its maintenance services profile for third-party maintenance work. With its Embraer authorized service center, Airshare maintains its Phenoms as well as the Citations and Challengers in its managed fleet.
“We quote [maintenance RFPs for fractional and management customers] like everybody else,” said Owen. “We welcome them to compare our services and prices. We’re as good as anybody, if not the best, on Phenoms. Our director of maintenance has been here since we took our first Phenom.”
As it has for all providers in recent months, Covid-19 tested Airshare’s resilience.
“I remember the day, March 16,” when operations ceased, Owen recalled. “It felt like every five minutes the situation would change. We didn’t know where we were headed.”
The following lockdown days were spent in the conference room monitoring news updates, developing safety and health protocols, and crafting cost-containment strategies.
“Keeping all our employees was job number one,” said COO Alex Franz, formerly the company’s chief pilot and later v-p of flight operations. “Airshare spends a lot of time hiring. We seek individuals who have the aptitude and drive and want to work as part of a team. If they have those three things, that person is going to deliver customer service even if they’re not trained—that’s their DNA.”
Franz noted that maintaining those standards had grown difficult as the pre-pandemic pilot shortage drained the talent pool, but the company “always stuck to our guns” on its hiring principles. With $3.9 million in Paycheck Protection Program funds from the CARES Act, Airshare kept all team members on board. It also used the Covid-induced reduction in flight hours to accelerate its aircraft interiors refreshment program. Now the entire Phenom fleet is outfitted with interiors two years old or less. Most of the refurbishment work is done in house, of course.
Today, with business aviation’s post-lockdown demand bump, “we have more customers than in the past and a lot of first-time [business aviation customer] interest in the space,” said Owen. The newbies have bought “a lot of cards—try before you buy—and already we’ve had some convert to fractions,” he said. Charter is also seeing “more and more customers.”
Airshare is now hiring for several pilot positions to meet current needs and believes all the pieces are in place to support a planned expansion into the Northeast and Southeast U.S.
But first, the company will upgrade its technology platform. “We’re going to make a strategic investment in technology for our customer portals,” said Owen. “The next wave is giving the right tools to customers that allow them to understand and take full advantage of the program, so we can really develop a service that’s second to none.”