On the Record With
Jake Cartwright, President & CEO, TAG Aviation USA
TAG Aviation is on its way to another record year, and it
has just launched its first official jet card.
"Times are good," says Jake Cartwright, president and CEO of
TAG Aviation USA. "This year has definitely been a record year in all aspects
of the business. Our numbers are up across the board."
TAG has added 18 airplanes to its managed fleet thus far
this year, bringing the total to more than 100 in approximately 55 U.S.
locations.
"That's the fully managed aircraft," Cartwright says. "The
charter sales business is up about 35% from last year." TAG has added a charter
sales office in Chicago to the list of existing ones in Teterboro, White
Plains, Minneapolis, Houston, San Francisco and Orange County, Calif.
On the managed side, "We've seen a lot of people come from
fractional," Cartwright says, noting that the fractional product is for all
practical purposes a management product. "We're the prime management company in
the United StatesÉ. We've been really successful in staying focused on what we
do well"— which is presenting a service that "looks to the owners like their own
flight department," he asserts.
Customers, Cartwright says, are finding that they like
owning their own aircraft and having a consistent crew. They get autonomy without
the hassle— what Cartwright calls "a turnkey outsourced flight department."
"We employ the pilots and we do everything else," Cartwright
says. "We don't pool pilots."
Customers "are buying big airplanes, midsize and up, with an
emphasis on up," he adds. TAG manages several smaller airplanes, including
Pilatus turboprops, but has a decided emphasis on the luxury end. "Our product
isn't set up for the little airplanes," Cartwright says.
Besides 18 new aircraft and the pilots and crews they
require, TAG has quietly added a jet card to its array of services and is
formally unveiling it here this week.
The TAG Aviation JetCard is available in increments of
$100,000, $250,000 and $500,000. Even though hourly rates are substantially
higher than straight charters, "They're simple and they're guaranteed,"
Cartwright says of the card concept. "I was a skeptic but I was totally proved
wrong by the market," he concedes.
Cartwright predicts increased scrutiny of business aviation
behind incidents like the (nonfatal) takeoff crash of a Challenger 600 in
Teterboro on February 2. The FAA one month later ordered the operator, Fort
Lauderdale's Platinum Jet Management, to cease operations, charging that
Platinum lacked proper certification.
"The industry will be stronger for it," the former Marine
Phantom and Eastern Airlines captain told Show News. "Raising the bar across
the board is a good thing."
— Rich Piellisch
