How Slow Are Things For You Frac Guys??

[imacdog]

Seeing less than 70 or 80 in the air at any time (except, perhaps, in the middle of the night) doesn't give me a real good feeling.

Would it make you feel better if we had 100 planes in the air at all times, if those extra 25 or 30 were all on ferry legs? My flying has been down some but a substantial portion of that has been flying empty planes around.

 

[gutshotdraw]

Well VNY always look like a QS parking lot, and wait until we get kicked out of Santa Monica, they won't know where to put us.......we'll be crowding Clay Lacy's ramp......

Nah, the new preferred FBO for Netjets is moving from Raytheon/Hawker-Beechcraft/nee Signature (pick your favorite) to McGuire Aviation this month. McGuire is on the site of the old Peterson. Good thing too because I HATE parking on the Lacy ramp.

 

[DO-82 driver]

Having planes in the air is not as important as the revenue those planes are producing. Lots of planes in the air (by total number or percentage) is not necessarily indicative of revenue produced or financial strength.

You may be right but if you have a bunch of pilots just sitting in hotels and FBO's or going home prior to the end of their tours might indicate that flying is down...... the question is....for how long.

Now granted, sitting in a hotel or FBO doesn't effect NJA's bottom line, but shipping pilots home prior to the end of their tour is an interresting twist.... that shows no viable legs.

 

[BeeDubya]

You may be right but if you have a bunch of pilots just sitting in hotels and FBO's or going home prior to the end of their tours might indicate that flying is down...... the question is....for how long.

Now granted, sitting in a hotel or FBO doesn't effect NJA's bottom line, but shipping pilots home prior to the end of their tour is an interresting twist.... that shows no viable legs.

I'm not going to argue that low utilization presents a problem. My point was that a number (be it, number in the air at a given time, or percentage of fleet in the air at a given time) is really useless for determining economic viablity, unless it is coupled with the other parts of the economic picture.

 

[DAS at 10/250]

THAT is a very good question. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I know that just on the NJA side (not including NJI, NJE, EJM, or NJME) we have well over 300 aircraft.

Seeing less than 70 or 80 in the air at any time (except, perhaps, in the middle of the night) doesn't give me a real good feeling.

Like I said, we'll be okay. I'm just very ambivalent about how long we can maintain at our current level without much flying.

Did that number include the QS tails? If the flightaware search just included EJA flights then all of our international acft wouldn't be included.

 

[realityman]

Did that number include the QS tails? If the flightaware search just included EJA flights then all of our international acft wouldn't be included.

Yes, I'm talking QS tails only. In fact. not even including the NJI planes, which are also QS tails. NJA alone has over 300 aircraft.

Yes, Fisch, I would feel better seeing 70 or 80 planes in the air at a time, even if many were ferry legs. Because it means that we're actually going somewhere to pick up pax! True, ferry legs were down anyway before the bottom dropped out of the economy, mainly because of new efficient scheduling that reduced ferry legs, but I was still flying a great deal, just more back-to-back pax legs.

BeeDubya, I agree that NJA probably makes most of its money on sales and management fees (which also are way down, if you can believe anything RTS told us in recurrent back in Dec. I was there.), but to say that we don't make any money from the operational side of things is not correct. When we fly pax, we make money. After all the fees are paid, have you seen what we charge as hourly fees? We're VERY expensive! It's not that we aren't worth it, but just pointing out that we make profits on actual flying too. If we just had average sales, but flying was way down, I think we'd be doing okay, at best. But with sales way down, and flying way down, well, let's just say it's going to be interesting of one or the other doesn't pick up a great deal this year.

By the way, I don't remember who said it or in what thread, but we did NOT have record sales of Marquis Jet cards last year. RTS himself said Marquis did okay, but was still down significantly from the year before. I'm not going to throw actual numbers up here on a public message board, but I think anyone who believes we are immune from this economic climate just because we're Netjets, better pull his/her head out of their a** and take another look.

And I still think we'll be alright. It just won't be easy.

 

[pilot772]

I'm really bored so here ya go right now there are 57 airplanes airborne that are using the EJA call sign. and another 7 that are flying under a NxxxQS tail number. These don't include any NJI airplanes. so right now the total is 64 planes airborne, now back to "prime time in the daytime" on TNT.

 

[BeeDubya]

BeeDubya, I agree that NJA probably makes most of its money on sales and management fees (which also are way down, if you can believe anything RTS told us in recurrent back in Dec. I was there.), but to say that we don't make any money from the operational side of things is not correct. When we fly pax, we make money. After all the fees are paid, have you seen what we charge as hourly fees? We're VERY expensive! It's not that we aren't worth it, but just pointing out that we make profits on actual flying too. If we just had average sales, but flying was way down, I think we'd be doing okay, at best. But with sales way down, and flying way down, well, let's just say it's going to be interesting of one or the other doesn't pick up a great deal this year.

By the way, I don't remember who said it or in what thread, but we did NOT have record sales of Marquis Jet cards last year. RTS himself said Marquis did okay, but was still down significantly from the year before. I'm not going to throw actual numbers up here on a public message board, but I think anyone who believes we are immune from this economic climate just because we're Netjets, better pull his/her head out of their a** and take another look.

And I still think we'll be alright. It just won't be easy.

realityman,

I have not (nor will I) commented on where NJ makes its money. Unless RTS has spoken publicly about it, I would consider it proprietary information, not appropriate for a public forum.

My point was simply that a comparison (either by percentage or raw numbers) of aircraft airborne at any given point in time is a poor indicator of the relative economic health of the various fractionals (absent a significant amount of additional data). It might be relevant if we knew if the flights were revenue or not. It might also be relevant if we knew exactly where the companies' profits are generated (meaning, does NJ make as much profit per hour as Flex or Shares). It would also be important to know if each fractionals' flying is evenly (or similarly) distributed throughout the day to evaluate whether the "snapshot" is reflective of a company's total flying.

Fraternally,

Brian

 

[eagle06]

OK...next question....

These number represent what percentage of each Company's total, airworthy fleets?

Meaning, what persentage of each Comnpany's aircraft are in the air?

Well cant be so sure about percentage of airworthy or revenue legs. But percentage based on how many APC says they have is as follows:

EJA - 12%
VNR - 36%
FIV - 18%
OPT -11%
LXJ - 17%

 

[gutshotdraw]

Nah, the new preferred FBO for Netjets is moving from Raytheon/Hawker-Beechcraft/nee Signature (pick your favorite) to McGuire Aviation this month. McGuire is on the site of the old Peterson. Good thing too because I HATE parking on the Lacy ramp.

BTW, correcting myself, it's Maguire Aviation and we start using them next Monday.