Aleksandr Celiadin is the founder of GetJet Airlines.
Though the air travel industry has experienced a remarkable recovery from its nadir during the COVID-19 crisis, airlines today still face some challenges. Globally, they face unprecedented staff shortages in flight deck crew, cabin crew, mechanics, and engineers, as well as airport ground handling staff. Delays in the availability of spare parts lead to numerous AOG (aircraft on the ground) situations. Airlines worldwide are working to address these challenges while simultaneously managing the surging demand from passengers keen on exploring the world after a prolonged lockdown period.
The Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance (ACMI) sector fulfills a crucial role in supporting both small and major airlines: We provide aircraft capacity, enabling them to carry passengers to their desired destinations, avoid delays and alleviate financial repercussions stemming from passenger compensations as per EU 261 regulation. ACMI providers take charge of crewing and operating the flights (under the client airline’s banner) and handling behind-the-scenes logistics such as aircraft maintenance and obtaining necessary flight certificates or permits. (The lessee manages ticket sales to their own passengers, provides fuel and covers airport charges and route taxes.) Such agreements can take place on an ad-hoc basis or on a long-term basis.
Our continued growth as a leader in a challenging sector has pushed us to be innovative in developing our service. Here are some of the traits we believe have led to our success in growing our business, which we believe can apply more broadly:
1. Bridging Industry Gaps
As a whole, the ACMI sector’s function is to provide services in areas that major airlines cannot cover. For example, when the Boeing 737 Max was blamed for two crashes and grounded for safety investigations, airlines dealt with the sudden shortage of aircraft through wet leases. As recently as this summer, ongoing mechanical issues with Pratt & Whitney engines (which impact some 57 different airlines) created a necessity for replacement aircraft to avoid disruptions during peak travel season.
Finding and bridging aviation industry gaps creatively and resourcefully is what makes for success stories in the ACMI sector—and, really, in any industry.
2. A Determined Mindset
When asked about our success, I often attribute it to our company’s origins in the Baltic states. We’re part of the European Union, but we maintain a “roll up your sleeves and get dirty” mindset and are not accustomed to the types of government benefits that some of our neighboring nations take for granted. We know we have to fight for our place in the global market. As an emerging economic and technology powerhouse that has long been overlooked, aviation entrepreneurs in the Baltics have had to quickly become business-minded, flexible and agile, while wielding our talents and manpower to rapidly develop a significant capacity for providing ACMI services worldwide.
We strive to exemplify this model of dynamism and agility, maintaining a medium-small fleet of up to 25 aircraft—we’ve found this is better for us, as far as managing orders, meeting obligations and staying in control, so that we can mitigate some of those same challenges (shortages of parts, crews, etc.) faced by our clients.
3. Embracing Uncertainty
When the pandemic hit and brought air travel to a standstill, the entire aviation industry went into—if you’ll forgive the metaphor—a tailspin. There was understandably a lot of panic. We felt this panic, just like everyone else. Instead of giving up, we decided to branch out: We removed the passenger seats from our aircraft and made use of the EASA cargo exception to transport PPE and other essential cargo.
Furthermore, during economic downturns, our ability to secure short-term leases (typically under two years) gave ACMI carriers like ours a unique advantage. It enabled us to step in and fill the void while airlines awaited clearer signs of what the future held. This meant that we could continue serving today’s customers, even when tomorrow remained uncertain.
4. A Commitment to Safe Innovation
Innovation is something of a double-edged sword in the aviation industry. On the one hand, emerging technologies promise to improve and enhance every aspect of a flight experience; on the other hand, safety will always be the highest priority. If you follow the evolution of aircraft developments by the major manufacturers, it is evident that issues at the initial phases of aircraft use are quite common.
Consequently, we’re cautious when considering the implementation of any new products or services. However, we operate in a continuously evolving sector in which we must constantly update our technology usage to optimize efficiency in our everyday aviation routine. We have transitioned to paperless cockpits, electronic flight bags, software for everything from accounting to crew training to recruitment. We leverage predictive analytic tools to monitor the need for base kits and spare parts at different locations, to track what common failures occur and how many spare wheels and brakes are needed or to ascertain the most statistically failed components to bring for various contracts throughout Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Middle East. As a company, we’ve invested a significant amount towards the latest IT software programs available to the aviation industry, to constantly control, monitor and improve our processes from both an operational and business perspective. This has a huge impact on our sustainability and efficiency.
5. A Sense of Integrity
Boasting loudly about our successes is never going to be part of our marketing strategy. The reason for this is intrinsic to what we do: We don’t want to implicitly tell customers, “Because you couldn’t cope with your production timeline, or your safety concerns, or your high customer demand, we had to step in.” Presenting our story this way would violate the trust that our customers place in us, and their expectation of both seamless service and discretion. We are focused on being a quality-oriented, trustworthy partner, versus one that opportunistically jumps in when a company is struggling and prioritizes making money off their struggles—or worse, takes liabilities, dumps the prices, and then does not deliver the service and disappears. Even as our services are sometimes demanded in chaotic or dysfunctional situations, integrity remains at the heart of what we do.
Aviation is a stubborn industry. New ideas and innovations take a while to catch on: There’s a rather rigid adherence to “this is how we’ve always done it.” But due to global economic, political and meteorological events, and the changes in customer demand that result, the industry as a whole is finding that it’s ripe for change. And this is true of so many other sectors. Finding a way to deliver that change, to meaningfully and positively shake up industries that are ready to evolve, is the key to success.
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