Chevron Extends a Yankee Welcome
And American-Style Fuel Service Plan

Chevron General Aviation is growing like wildfire in the United States, having added upwards 40 general aviation fueling dealerships over the past year, including the entire 19-location Mercury Air FBO chain. The Houston- and San Ramon, California-headquartered operation has no GA action as yet in Europe, but is displaying here at EBACE.

What gives?

"We want to let the European business community know that we have FBOs across the Uniteed States," says Chevron General Aviation brand manager Lynn Kohl.

"We have about 400 FBOs that we would love for them to come visit," she says. Count Canada, and it's about 550, notes business development manager Keith Sawyer. Chevron's General Aviation group has some 17 employees now in California and Texas, up from a dozen just a few months ago. Chevron is stepping up its sales efforts in Europe, and is taking advantage of the EBACE venue to do so.

Chevron's key new offering is its "Alliance" contract-into-plane program. Run in conjunction with Kansas-based Multi Service Corp (MSC, which is sharing Chevron's EBACE display in Booth 7260), Alliance features a single payment card that can be used to buy Chevron fuel and other services at hundreds of FBOs.

"The card is as programmable and as flexible as anything in the industry," says Sawyer. It is fully automated, eliminates paper records and receipts, and works via the web, allowing customers to arrange for Chevron fuel and services in advance from any location with an Internet hook-up.

Such single-card convenience is coming to be expected in the United States, although according to Sawyer the Alliance program offers a greater breadth of services than its competition. It's applicable to every FAR category, for example, from single-owner aircraft through fractionals and charters. "I don't think it's really penetrated Europe," he says of the one-card concept-another reason to promote it aggressively here.

Mercury Air, besides now providing Chevron fuel, is well positioned to welcome European business flyers arriving in the U.S. Mercury maintains FBOs at Atlanta's Hartsfield International and DeKalb-Peachtree airports, at Hanscom Field outside Boston, in Birmingham, Alabama and at Charleston and Johns Island, South Carolina, in the eastern U.S. Mercury recently refurbished its FBO in Los Angeles, too.

In addition to signing on for Chevron fuel, Mercury last year publicized a pact with Executive Jets by which it will provide passenger handling, ramp, fueling, hangaring and other services for NetJets fractional ownership aircraft at all 19 locations.
Mercury is also promoting a new Internet reservation service dubbed Easy Turn designed to insure quick on-the-ground turnarounds.

Also sharing the Chevron EBACE display is Kansas City, Kansas-based Garsite, which manufactures aircraft refueling vehicles, including a new 15,000-gallon tanker for jet refueling. Aircraft refueling trucks are particularly important in Europe, where U.S.-style FBOs are rare and so fuel is brought to the aircraft.

"This is a first time for all of us," Sawyer says of the joint display at EBACE, with Chevron, Mercury, MSC and Garsite, "It's made economic sense."

"We want to be a part of whatever is happening," says Chevron's Kohl. "It's a market that will have more potential for us," she says of Europe.

Parent Chevron is in the midst of acquiring Texaco (European approval of the merger came through earlier this year and could be forthcoming from U.S. authorities this summer), which besides serving 125 airlines at nearly 550 airports in 50 countries, has some 400 general aviation fuel outlets in the U.S.

By Rich Piellisch