Flexjet, the fractional jet share provider owned by Bombardier, announced that it has earned the Air Charter Safety Foundation’s highest safety rating. The company, which claims to be the first fractional provider to win this distinction, already held a Platinum rating (the highest available) from Argus and has received the FAA’s Diamond Award of Excellence for maintenance training for 11 consecutive years.
The Richardson, Texas company also revealed it is introducing a customer account manager program. Under the program, the firm assigns a dedicated account manager to each of its fractional and Flexjet One whole-aircraft-management customers to oversee everything from flight bookings and catering requests to ground transportation. After each flight, the account manager follows up to make sure the trip was executed without problem and to address any concerns.

To develop the program, said Flexjet CEO Fred Reid, “we did six months of benchmarking, then a technology assessment and then we had a very intensive training program. And if you were an incumbent at Flexjet, even for 10 years, you had to apply for the job. We’ve been very rigorous about [selecting] the people we’ve been willing to put into these roles.”    Before this program started, Reid added, customers “would get a welcoming package and it would say, ‘For catering, call this number; for visa requirements, call this number; for billing inquiries, call this number; and so on. We think we now have the most advanced one-stop program out there. [Customers] call one number, one person, and that person runs all around the building and fixes all the problems and gets back to them.”

In other Flexjet news, the company reported at the NBAA show that it has added two executives to its leadership team. Mike Kruczynski comes aboard as senior director of strategy and product management, while Kevin Farley has signed on as director of marketing.

“These are two critical areas in which I wanted to become a little more innovative and thought there was a chance to get some new blood in,” said Reid. “The strategy position had been folded into a portfolio of a couple of other assignments but I broke it out because I wanted an unrelenting focus on those areas. We wanted to work on our product evolution and continue to evolve the look and feel of our advertising, direct marketing and collateral material.”

Kruczynski spent more than 10 years at American Airlines, where he served most recently as managing director of capacity planning and led the effort to restructure where the airline flies. Also at American, he worked as a finance manager in corporate planning and as a senior analyst in the finance and revenue management departments. At Flexjet, his responsibilities include development of the operating strategic plan, which encompasses pricing of all products and services and leadership of all expansion activities.

Farley, meanwhile, is directing all of Flexjet’s marketing personnel and functions. His background includes positions as national marketing manager at Comair Holdings and director of sales and marketing at Midwest Airlines.