CEO says OEMs, MROs endangering small charter operators

Nicholas Air CEO NJ Correnti is joining Flexjet, Inc. Chairman Kenn Ricci in criticizing how OEMs and MROs support existing operators and private jet owners.

Ricci has recently taken to the media to publicize his company’s lawsuit against Honeywell.

Honeywell manufactures and supports the engines for its Challenger, Praetor, and Legacy fleets.

Depositions from the ongoing court case show Honeywell prioritized aircraft destined for new customers over repairs for existing customers like Flexjet.

The result, according to the allegations, was that a large portion of Flexjet’s fleet was grounded, causing it to incur additional costs to fulfill flights guaranteed for its fractional owners.

Speaking at Corporate Jet Investor in Miami, Correnti took the OEMs and MROs to task.

Like Flexjet, Nicholas Air — the 10th-largest charter/fractional operator in the U.S. — has been able to handle the challenges, he said.

Financially Unviable

However, he says delays in servicing the existing fleet by OEMs and MROs are leaving smaller operators financially unviable.

“I don’t think there’s a supply chain issue…We’re producing airplanes at a staggering rate, and the backlogs are 18 months, two years, depending on the OEM,” Correnti noted, before adding, “All those airplanes being produced and sold off the assembly lines have to have the parts that the current aircraft that are in circulation need.”

Correnti told the audience that the revenue loss of having airplanes grounded for months at a time will be too much for smaller operators.

He continued, “Who I feel sorry for is the one, two, three airplane operations, or the young entrepreneur…They’re not going to make it. They are going to fail.”

Correnti compared it to buying a new luxury car.

After driving it off the lot, your new car breaks down and is towed back to the dealership.

The dealership service center tells the customer they know the problem, but there is an eight-month wait for the component.

Also, no loaners are available.

At the same time, you see more of the car types you just bought being offloaded onto the lot.

When you ask why they can’t take the part from one of those cars or loan you one, you are told they are committed to new customers.

Yet the car owner still has to make their payments on the car they can’t drive.

Profits Over Service

Correnti said OEMs and key parts suppliers are undermining customer confidence.

“We have to stop prioritizing profits over customer service principles,” Correnti told the CJI audience.

Before shuttering in 2023, Jet It CEO Glenn Gonzales criticized its then-exclusive aircraft supplier, Honda Aircraft.

In an email to customers, Gonzales wrote:

‘As a believer in the Honda brand, I am incredibly disappointed by the uptime of the HondaJet, and the grossly inadequate support we (and by extension you, our member) have been subjected to by Honda Aircraft Company. We expected and relied on Honda to provide the Honda standard of quality and reliability that the brand is known for, and they represented to us they would have in their aviation division. They assert that their aircraft is designed for operators and is the perfect fit for charter and fleet operators. And while their product may well be described as a fine piece of engineering, their service has been woefully lacking. As a minimum, we expected the HondaJet to meet an industry standard of 85% availability. Meaning that 85% of the fleet is flyable on any given day. However, for every nine days that we fly a HondaJet, it requires six days of maintenance. In the last five months, this statistic has resulted in Jet It having an average of only 10 aircraft flyable out of 24.’

Airline CEOs have long been publicly critical of OEMs.

Executives of private jet operators have generally taken a more muted approach —until now.

(Editor’s Note: Relevant comments from Jet It’s CEO in 2022 were added to this story after publication)