Briley + Tata = BJETS
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Posted Date: 19/05/2008
Issue: Executive & VIP Aviation International June 2008
Publication: Executive & VIP Aviation International
The tally of aircraft on order is large and the ambition is high but the scope for developing a private jet offering to the Indian and South-east Asian market is huge and this is what is driving BJETS.
Majority owned by Singapore-based Briley Group, BJETS has been launched to soak up this surging demand for private aviation in the Asian market. The other part of the equation is Indian Hotels Company Ltd, part of the Tata Group. With Indian and Singaporean enterprises behind the new launch, there is little wonder that Mark Baier, Chief Executive Officer of BJETS, is braced for success.
The first question that comes to mind is why has this kind of player been absent in the Asian market for so long? Baier responds that the project has been 18 months in the making and there has been no sitting back. “Bala Ramamoorthy [founder and Managing Director of BJETS as well as Chief Executive Officer of the Briley Group] found it hard to travel around this part of the world so we discussed the potential for launching this kind of operation. It has taken as long as it has taken. And 18 months is really not that long from the initial discussion over dinner to ordering $600 million worth of aircraft,” remarks Baier. BJETS is now on the cusp of launching operations, which will begin in May 2008.
Baier concedes that the fundamental concepts of operating in Europe or North America apply equally to Asia. “But what we’re bringing to Asia is what Asia doesn’t have: a committed operator. We have invested in buying aircraft. We can provide the guaranteed availability that some of the primary fractional companies provide. Apart from that, we’re bringing tried and true products and services to a part of the world that really has a dearth of those products and services.”
The beauty of BJETS is that it has been drawn up on a clean sheet of paper. He says: “We’re going to do it professionally and effectively; and we’re not inheriting any of the short-comings of the systems that become perpetuated because everyone has always run this kind of business in a certain kind of way. We get to start with a clean playing field and to do it the way we want to do it.”
The venture is very much prompted by the boom in the Indian economy as well as continued economic growth in the South-east Asian economies. “A couple of years ago there was a shift in mentality whereby branding and luxury products became important in Asia so the propensity to spend increased,” explains Baier. “Also, business between these various countries has expanded enormously. Wealth generation has grown phenomenally over the last couple of years. All of these elements combined have created a perfect storm. That is why the 18 months to two-year period was critical.”
BJETS’ clientele will be a culturally diverse mix from private and public domains. “I think clients will use it slightly less for personal reasons than they do in Europe and the US. Asia is growing at such an amazing pace and people are using private jets principally for business. But I think there will be many executives from multinational companies flying around the region. These will be large and mid-sized Indian and South-east Asian companies who value time. Flying private means maximising time with family and for business,” he says. “But there will always be a small percentage of people who treat themselves to flying privately.”
Finding fleet
So why did BJETS – having determined its business plan and its market – choose to order 20 Cessna Citation CJ2+ jets and 20 Hawker 850XP and 900XP jets with options for 10 more? “I think the CJ2s and the Hawkers are probably the best aircraft available in their categories. The CJ2 gets you anywhere within India. It can land on shorter runways than any of the other jets in its category. It is below a certain weight which gives it benefits from a certification perspective. And then there is Cessna’s reputation and our relationship with Cessna.”
In terms of the Hawkers, similar criteria apply. Baier talks also in terms of the high reliability of the aircraft. “I think we’ll do a fair amount of domestic flying with the Hawker but I also think that Singapore-Hong Kong will be a popular route. We might go to Dubai from time to time from India,” he explains.
The aircraft will be nomads but BJETS will have a pair of head offices in Mumbai and Singapore, and the operations centre at Hyderabad. Aftermarket support will be provided by OEM service stations. “The OEMs are making fairly large investments in the region. Hawker has just opened an authorised service centre in Delhi and Cessna has opened one in Bangalore but there have been some regional maintenance players there for quite some time,” Baier comments. “There is Jet Aviation in Dubai – which is not too far away. From a support perspective, we are pretty pleased at what we can find out here.”
On the launch date – at the end of May – BJETS will launch five aircraft: three Hawkers and two CJ2s.
Making markets?
When asked whether BJETS will have to stir up the market to any large extent or if the market will literally be knocking at BJETS’ door, Baier responds: “There is so much pent up demand, one of the things that pushed us to pull the trigger is that there are so many people just waiting for this service. Launching in a new market is never easy but I think there are a lot of local and regional potential customers as well as potential customers in the US and Europe that are familiar with flying privately who will want to fly in this region but they can’t currently because there are few good providers.”
When BJETS does burst onto the scene, it will be offering a bundle of products. “There are three principal products,” confirms Baier. “The traditional fractional concept, the block charter off the back of the fractional fleet as well as aircraft management.”
While BJETS is very much South-east Asia and India-centric, there may well be many opportunities available to BJETS in Asia over time but Baier is not as interested in flat growth – as we have seen in Japan – as in dynamic growth like that we are seeing in the two markets that have caught BJETS’ eye. These two chunks of Asia also boast semi-liberal economies which are very forward thinking. “India is also a good geographic area like Europe or the US where there is a lot of business being done. From a regulatory perspective it is reasonably free. We plan to focus on these two regions and, quite frankly, we have no plans to go anywhere else,” he says.
To accommodate the burgeoning market, Baier and his team will need crews and that means addressing the dreaded pilot shortage problem. “We’ve been recruiting pilots and have been very pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming response received,” comments Baier. “We had concerns at first and thought we would be competing heavily with the airlines and other operators but I think BJETS has a pretty compelling story as well as an attractive scheduling system for the pilots, and so there’s been a lot of inbound interest. At this stage we haven’t had any problems hiring the right people.”
To date, Baier is thrilled at the quality of Captains BJETS has been able to attract to this new venture. “I think this is genuinely one of the most exciting business aviation projects in the world,” he enthuses. “If not, it is the most exciting.”
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