Jet Aviation (Booth R134) has made a “strong start” to 2017 with hangars full, especially in Europe and the U.S., company president Rob Smith told AIN just before EBACE. "The only slight weakness is MRO in Asia, but even that’s started to pick up,” he said, adding that the managed fleet is “up year-over-year” and that Jet Aviation has “already delivered two completions, a narrowbody and a widebody” thus far this year.

The strategic goal of Jet Aviation, which is a division of General Dynamics and a sister company to Gulfstream Aerospace, is “to be the preeminent business aviation service provider worldwide,” Smith said. “With our new 'One Jet' initiative, we want to present ourselves as one company to customers globally and be more consistent, with a single customer offering. This will also allow us to grow by acquisitions and organically.”

Smith said that Jet Aviation now has 25 locations—FBOs, MROs, completions and combined FBO/MRO facilities—in its network. “We’re not looking to become the largest FBO chain globally but want to be strategic, to address locations; we just acquired one in the [Washington] Dulles area, and also have San Juan [Puerto Rico] as of early April. We have also opened up a ‘brownfield’ location at Van Nuys [California]—we’ll take down the existing facility and put in a new FBO. It’s been operating since mid-2016 but [the new one] will open in mid-2018.”

He added, “We have been looking to expand our network, while rolling our One Jet in our 50th anniversary year—the start of a five-year plan to bring [all the company’s sites] into better alignment.”

In the management/charter space Smith said, “With our AOCs we can offer charter opportunities to customers [owners of managed aircraft]—the Western U.S. has the best charter market from that perspective.” The company has “a fleet of almost 300 aircraft globally…it’s a solid business, and when the charter market is weak it doesn’t really have an impact,” he said, because that is not the primary purpose the owners have these aircraft.

“We just rolled out One Jet in the last couple of months—we’re finalizing the organizational structure in the next month," Smith said. "It’s a case of it’s a good idea, but let’s see it in execution. The jury will be out until we see if we can create a better, more aligned company. And we’re doing that to stay ahead of the competition.”

Turning to VIP aircraft completions, Smith said, “We’ve got several aircraft in the hangar—that business has remained solid for us, and we have a decent pipeline especially with the A320neo and 737 Max coming online in 2018. It has been a good business for us and we’ve enjoyed a good reputation for meeting our commitments. But we have to earn the trust of our customers every time.”

Asked about competition in completions, Smith responded, “We certainly place Jet Aviation at the top, not just at the top end. Focused in Basel and Singapore and Dubai.”

He also said that the refurbishment, modification and upgrade business is going well. “We are certainly well versed in this. We just refurbished the first BBJ we ever did a completion for. So we’re involved not only at the sale of an aircraft, and it can just be a modernization,” he noted.

Smith maintained that bizliners and large cabin business jets would remain the focus for the business, though the company would evaluate any opportunities within the business aviation domain it knows so well. “I’m a strong believer that you’re destined to fail if you go outside your competencies,” he said.

Asked about any holes in the business, its international presence or capabilities, he told AIN, “It’s probably more geographic. For example, we’re not in London and it’s somewhere we’d love to be.”

In relation to being Gulfstream’s sister company, he reflected, “From a General Dynamics perspective, [Gulfstream CEO] Mark Burns and I both report to the CEO, Phebe Novakovic. “We’re separate entities but there are synergies,” said Smith. “But we have [as other customers] Dassault, Boeing, Bombardier, Embraer, Cessna…so it’s important for us to be independent and support all the OEMs. And the General Dynamics structure is very decentralized. But when General Dynamics acquired Jet Aviation nine years ago, the focus was top end and General Dynamics’ philosophy is never to be a minor player in a sector.”

With this being Jet Aviation’s 50th anniversary year, "We’re looking back over our history and the 50 years," Smith said. "I’ve had the pleasure of going through some of our archives and we’ve been publishing our history in chapters on our website. And with our rebranding earlier this year we are really focusing on the future."