Embraer Executive Jets president and CEO Michael Amalfitano and Dassault Falcon Jet CEO Thierry Betbeze brought business aviation leadership in the post-Covid era into focus during the "Leadership Insights and Directions" panel during the second day of the JetNet iQ Summit in New York City.
"First order of business isn’t hiring—it’s creating fulfillment and purpose," said Amalfitano. "You have to create advancement opportunities that allow for someone to succeed. Nobody wants to do the same thing forever."
He said that younger people are becoming excited about working in the business aviation sector, noting that creating opportunities for advancement and fair compensation is key.
"The issue is not about simply hiring. It’s about training and investing dollars in the people so they can become master craftsmen and -women," he said. "What happened during the pandemic is we lost the best talent in every aspect of aerospace. You have to hire the people and get them motivated, but you have to invest dollars to train them."
Betbeze said growing the industry is facing challenges in a post-Covid workforce. "When we all talk about the supply chain, very often this is not raw materials or logistics. It’s that you don’t have the right person in your subcontractors," he noted. "What happened with many subcontractors, during Covid, [is] we lost the best ones."
"The supply chain is fractured in many ways," Amalfitano added. "That talent pool we lost takes time to recover."
He explained that good leadership also necessitates maintaining key relationships with suppliers. "You’ve got to go to the supplier. We have hundreds of people sitting with suppliers and addressing problems firsthand and resolving it in their space as partners so they can ramp up more quickly to deliver results," Amalfitano said. "You gotta do the work; it’s not just fairy dust."