Quality time: Why more charter hours may not mean more profits

January 28, 2010 | Posted by Scott Cutshall

“How many charter hours can you put on my plane?” That’s often the first question I’m asked by clients looking for an aircraft management company. While the answer is important, the number of charter hours is only part of the profit equation. It’s the type of charter trip—the quality of the hours, if you will—that matters most to your bottom line.

Why? Lets take the same plane, an eight-passenger Cessna Citation X super midsize jet, and fly it on two different charter journeys to see which is more profitable for the aircraft owner.

The Citation X has a range of 2,900 nm, or seven hours and burns 370 gallons of fuel for the first hour and 300 gallons for the second hour and beyond. For our comparison, we’ll make three basic assumptions when calculating the Direct Operating Cost (DOC) below: 1) fuel is $4.00/gallon; 2) the aircraft is on the standard engine program; and 3) you are allocating dollars for routine maintenance.

Charter Trip #1: LA to Chicago to LA
Flight Time: 7 hours
Average Fuel Burn: 320 g/hr
DOC: $2,160/hr
Charter Revenue: $3,485/hr
Profit: $1,325/hr (38% gross margin)

Charter Trip #2: LA to San Francisco to LA
Flight Time: 2 hours
Average Fuel Burn: 410 g/hr (lower-altitude flying burns more fuel)
DOC: $2,520/hr
Charter Revenue: $3,485/hr
Profit: $965/hr (27% gross margin)

The difference is striking. If you were the owner, you’d make $360 more per hour from Trip #1 than Trip #2, boosting your gross margin by eleven percent. This means that at 20 charter hours per month, you would make an additional $7,200 by flying charters similar to Trip #1. Moreover, the difference grows along with the number of charter hours. For example, at 40 charter hours per month the delta would be $14,400—enough to cover monthly management, hangar, and insurance fees, with a few thousand left over to go towards pilot salaries or other expense. Plus, these numbers don’t include the cost of additional wear and tear on the aircraft from flying so many short trips which increase maintenance costs and lower resale value.

What does all this have to do with choosing a management company? Simple. Although your profit fluctuates with the cycle length, the management company’s profit per charter hour stays constant, and that can create conflicting interests. If your management company is truly interested in helping you reduce your cost of ownership, treating your aircraft just as they would their own, they should be as concerned with the quality of charter hours as they are with the quantity..

So when a company tells you how many hours of charter you can expect, your follow up question should be: “What is the average cycle length for those hours?” Their answer will tell you a lot about what you can expect from that company in every aspect of managing your aircraft.

>>> What’s coming next week?: Fuel tax credits, lay-up provisions, and other financial benefits you should receive if your management company is acting on your behalf.

Categories: Management | Tags: aircraft management, private jet ownership | No Comments »