On the Record with JAKE CARTWRIGHT, PRESIDENT & CEO,
TAG AVIATION USA, INC.
TAG Gets Efficient & Rakes in the Profits
Jake Cartwright always makes it sound easy. "Last year was
our most profitable year in history," he says-apparently bucking
a business aviation industry trend, big-time.
It's only with a bit of prompting do you learn that the record
TAG USA tally comes behind the late-1999 acquisition of Wayfarer
and two tough years integrating corporate cultures and systems to
come up with a new and bigger TAG.
"We had to change a lot of things," understates Cartwright,
a former Marine and 10,000-hour airline pilot who is president and
CEO of TAG USA. Some 30 aircraft were added to a managed fleet of
about 90, and approximately 150 Wayfarer employees added to TAG
USA's 250. Accounting systems, computers and people had to be brought
into conformance.
Evidently they were. "Our efficiencies on the business systems
came together in 2002," Cartwright says. What he calls "natural
growth" has helped too: TAG USA (Booth 3653 here) now boasts
a managed fleet of about 125 aircraft, with 600 employees.
Just since July, Cartwright told Show News on the eve of Orlando,
TAG has added a Challenger 601, three 604s, a Gulfstream IV and
a Global Express to its managed fleet, all of them aircraft with
first-time owners.
The Wayfarer purchase also enhanced TAG's position in the critical
Northeast market, closing the loop, as it were, between Cartwright's
San Francisco-based operation and the parent company, which is based
in Switzerland and also runs the burgeoning business aircraft operation,
with a spiffy new terminal and now famous control tower, at Farnborough
in the UK.
Here Cartwright continues to wrestle with the vicissitudes of
a cranky market, which he describes as "spiky." Security
concerns since 9/11 have stimulated the demand for charter flying
but the faltering economy, after a terrific surge two years ago,
has hurt it. "People have to have money to fly charter,"
Cartwright observes.
"It's a very difficult business out there. Everybody's trying
to hold their heads above water."
"Like everybody else, you're trying to hold what you've got,"
Cartwright says. When it comes to the U.S. market however, TAG now
has more than most.
--Rich Piellisch
TAG Seeks More Prominent Charter Position
TAG USA continues to try to make the case that good old charter
is the best way to fly, the efforts of fractional operators
to attract new customers notwithstanding.
"It's really the cheapest and best way to use a business
aircraft until you're ready to buy one," says TAG USA
president and CEO Jake Cartwright.
The challenge is to deliver the price predictability and
service consistency of plans like NetJets' Marquis program,
and competing jet cards, without asking for minimum usage
or up-front memberships.
TAG is investigating software and management improvements
to make sure it can promise, and profitably deliver, absolutely
predictable pricing, guaranteed, to charter passengers. "We
don't have any magic formula," Cartwright says: capable
and courteous crews, top-notch catering and clean and attractive
airplanes are key parts of the package.
