Atlanta-based Volato is moving quickly to accommodate stranded aircraft owners and pilots impacted by last week’s shutdown of fractional HondaJet provider Jet It. Volato CEO Matt Liotta told AIN this morning that his company is prepared to offer Jet It HondaJet owners short-term leases and onboard pilots displaced by the shuttering. Liotta said the key to the strategy was moving quickly before too many airplanes and pilots were dispersed.
He added that Volato had been in touch with roughly half of Jet It aircraft owners and that the company's former pilots were already applying for employment. Liotta said hiring simulator-current, insurance-qualified pilots was simply a matter of training on internal processes and a check ride.
Volato operates 17 HondaJets and has 24 more on order. At the time of its shutdown, Jet It had 21 HondaJets, but Liotta said his research indicated as many as 11 were being held in maintenance centers pending payment for services, and at least one had a lien attached for non-payment.
Further complicating matters, maintenance records relating to Jet It’s Honda fleet were believed to be in a locked office in Greensboro, North Carolina, from which Jet It had been evicted. Jet It had also stopped payments to Honda Aircraft for its factory aircraft and engine maintenance support program, making moving any of those airplanes risky. AIN reached out to a spokesman for Jet It over the weekend but did not receive a reply.
Volato had been in touch with Honda regarding maintenance program coverage for the Jet It aircraft, said Liotta, and have fashioned a solution to provide Jet It owners who opted to lease with Volato with maintenance protection. However, liberating aircraft held in maintenance pending payment will likely require outlays from aircraft owners and some of those outlays could be substantial as Jet It aircraft were enrolled in Honda’s P2 maintenance plan, which covered parts and not labor, as opposed to the P3 plan that covers both. Liotta said aircraft enrolled in P2 likely would be difficult to remarket.
Liotta added that from his experience, Jet It’s claims of deficient Honda product support were without merit and said that Volato’s experience with the OEM’s support at any given time has been very good. Jet It’s real problem, according to Liotta, is that it charged owners an hourly occupied rate substantially below the aircraft’s direct operating cost—less than half of what his company charges even before fuel is added into the equation.
“There’s a lot of talk in the market right now about struggling operators. People need to look at charges and see if they make sense and are reasonable. When something seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he concluded.