Bombardier Sees Growth Moderating As It Adds Models to the Flexjet Fleet

"It's positioned just right," says Clifford Dickman. "We think it's going to be a really nice fit between the Learjet fleet and the Bombardier Challenger."

The president (since February) of Bombardier Business Jet Solutions is talking about his company's new super-midsize jet, the $14.675 million Continental, which made its first flight last month and is slated to enter service in mid-2003.

Bombardier BJS is the parent organization for the Dallas-based Flexjet fractional ownership program. Flexjet is to take 25 of the 115 Continentals Bombardier has thus far sold.

Elsewhere, the Bombardier fractional fleet is to get its first top-of-the-line, Gulfstream-challenging Global Express this December. In lighter jets, Flexjet expects to add a Learjet 45 to its Copenhagen-headquartered European operation in about a month or so.

In another change, Flexjet may lose its effective monopoly on new Bombardier aircraft (Flight Options and now Raytheon Travel Air offer used Challenger 601s). That's because parent Bombardier Business Aircraft, in a turnaround, has decided to entertain offers for its new jets from fractional operators it competes with.

The Bombardier BJS boss estimates that, across the board, Flexjet accounts for 15% to 17% of Bombardier Business Aircraft sales. Now the fractionals sector could account for even more.

Like other fractional operators in a year of extreme economic concern, Flexjet reports an increase in business and is forecasting a total of some 85,000 flight hours for 2001 -- up 11% percent from last year.

"We're continuing to see comfortable growth across the fleet," Dickman says. "Business is up," -- although he acknowledges there is some softening from earlier projections.

"One of the big challenges we're seeing is the volatility of the markets," he notes -- potential aircraft buyers, fractional buyers included, get spooked when stock market prices fluctuate.

The most popular aircraft this year, according to Dickman, is the second smallest in the Flexjet fleet, the Learjet 45, an eight- to nine-passenger, Mach 0.81, 2,120-nmi, $9.42 million airplane. "They're gone," Dickman says of Learjet 45 shares. "There is a waiting list. It's the right size and the right price," noting that the Flexjet program took eight of the first ten Lear 45s delivered. "It fits the fractional ownership model very well."

That said, Dickman expects great things of Bombardier's flagship Global Express, too. "When the Continental is there and it's available," he told Show News, "it is going to become extremely popular."

Helping boost the Flexjet fractional program is Bombardier's little-heralded acquisition of Skyjet.com, an Internet-based charter aircraft reservations service. Skyjet.com helps passengers -- most of them, presumably, non-business jet owners -- find charter flights to suit their needs. Bombardier sees it helping move these potential customers from scheduled airline service to private ownership.

In a related development, Bombardier just last month acquired New Jersey's Air Charter Online, a specialist in aircraft availability data. "We believe Air Charter Online is ideally positioned to bring air charter reservation technology to the next level," said Bombardier Business Aircraft president Pierre Beaudoin.

Like other fractional operators, Dickman likes to talk service. "The goal is 'Focus on the customer,'" he says. One new initiative is the placement of Palm VII personal data communicators on all Flexjet aircraft, with which customers are invited to participate in satisfaction surveys. The results are transmitted instantly to Flexjet program managers.

"We're continually optimizing behind the scenes," Dickman says. For example? Bombardier BJS just this past summer reorganized its Flexjet operations center in Dallas according to aircraft type, which should lead to better coordination between people responsible for dispatch, catering and other services. "It streamlines coordination between the different functional groups," Dickman says.

-Rich Piellisch