The problem, he says, is “boutique” is bandied around too often, but in his case he really means it.

“Everyone says boutique, but you cannot be boutique when you have 25 or 30 planes, because the management are lost in board meetings and travelling all the time,” he says.

Instead, Belgian Laitat, who was previously the CEO and accountable manager of Abelag/Luxaviation Belgium, intends to cap his fleet at 15.

“My goal is not fleet size,” he says. “Of course, we will be profitable. It’s not a goal to lose money. But my biggest pride is that at Abelag very few owners left. Some of them, I was operating their fourth successive plane. So if you have that as a passion, you can make a living quite decently.”

Fulfil promises

JetHouse, which is registered in Malta, launched with a Dassault Falcon 7X in Brussels in early 2024 and Laitat plans to add another aircraft “every six to nine months”.

“I have good confidence that they will come,” says Laitat, who oversaw a fleet of 25 aircraft at Abelag. The 15 is “not a magic number”, he adds, but about the level where he and his senior team of eight, with about 175 years’ collective experience in the business, can provide a “boutique” service. Alongside Laitat as founders are Nicolas Willemot, the CFO, and Tina Boeckx, director of flight operations, both also formerly of Abelag.

“It becomes difficult to fulfil promises because it’s always the founder or the CFO, who at some point met an owner and said, ‘OK, we’re going to pamper you’. But when it’s too big, the person feels you don’t follow them in the same way. So it’s really a matter of time that is driving this number in the fleet.

“We don’t like to disappoint. Of course, sometimes, even the bad weather is your fault but having a client who sends you a handwritten note saying, ‘I’m so happy to have joined you’. It’s what we have in our blood.”

Passion for service

JetHouse’s natural market is Europe, the Middle East and “why not some French-speaking countries in Africa” but Laitat is not planning to expand for the sake of it.

“If someone was really begging to operate now out of Bermuda, I’m not sure I’m the right person,” he says.

Laitat was at Abelag for nearly 20 years, including for the acquisition by Luxaviation in 2013 and the purchase of ExecuJet in 2015, but left in 2021 with Willemot following closely behind.

“Let’s say that it became so big,” he says. “It’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact, it suits you or not.”

He quickly took up running AllianceJet in Malta, but the tide was pushing him towards setting up on his own and in May last year he took the plunge. Knowing he needed his team in place before he could meet with Transport Malta to apply for the AOC, he began ringing around trusted former colleagues and a number left jobs to join him. Laitat also partnered with Fiona Healy, MD, FCF Assets who “delivered impeccable guidance on all the steps needed to expedite the AOC”. The licence was signed off in seven months in February 2024.

“I wanted to have something with an amazing team, and be able to do something without any obstacles, with this passion for service,” he says. 

“The beauty of starting from scratch is we had the possibility to use these new technologies that have flourished in recent years that are all integrated. It is efficient and helps everyone.”

Freedom

A lack of transparency is one of Laitat’s bugbears in the industry and he is determined to operate differently at JetHouse.

“The way to keep the loyalty of clients is to always be able to look at yourself in the mirror,” he says. “It’s a small world and in the end, the cost of changing an owner or having plus three aircraft one year, but minus four the next, it’s not efficient.

“Of course, there are very few clients and it’s a tough business. Sometimes just to reach for a coffee with an owner, it’s the work of nine or 12 months.”

Building trust with a client leads to a “fantastic adventure for a long time”, he adds.

Laitat admits that being an entrepreneur doesn’t always come naturally but he is relishing a new adventure with JetHouse. 

“Some people are born entrepreneurs, some have to be entrepreneurs by the events of life, you know? But it’s quite fantastic to have this freedom,” he says.

The post Laitat redefines ’boutique’ with JetHouse venture appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

Since 2011, the Luxembourg company has bought Fairjets in Germany, Abelag in Belgium, Unijet in France, the UK’s London Executive Aviation, French and Portuguese operator Masterjet and – most significantly – ExecuJet, a truly international business aviation company. Luxaviation now has 14 air operators’ certificates, 25 FBOs and 15 maintenance facilities. And it wants to keep growing.

Gerrit Basson, former CEO of ExecuJet and now president of Luxaviation Group, has spent a lot of time trying to create one company. “Integration starts at a high level but involves every level,” says Basson. “We created the post of chief integration officer with Hervé Laitat [CEO of Abelag, now Luxaviation Belgium] taking it on and integration is a huge focus of the executive committee.”

But changing the logos on 1,700 business cards and more than 40 buildings in 32 different places is simple compared to the softer human resource challenges. Many of the employees have spent years at different operators (some have even founded them) and getting them to feel they belong to a large global operator is not easy.

“The cultural issues are without doubt the hardest. Even changing someone’s email address can be emotional,” says Basson. “It may seem like a little thing but for someone that has worked at a company for a long time it can mean an awful lot.”

A Ritz-Carlton culture

The management team has spent a lot of time looking at how to create  single global culture. One solution comes from the basement of every Ritz-Carlton hotel. The hotel company employs more than 40,000 employees at 91 hotels in 30 countries (putting the size of one of the largest business aviation operators into perspective).

Ritz-Carlton takes company culture seriously. It believes that it is the key to customers receiving what it calls Gold Standard Service. The company – and its individual hotels – have won many human resource awards. In 2000 it created the Ritz-Carlton Academy both for its employees and to train other companies.

There was also a cultural fit between the two companies as both aircraft operators and hotels focus on keeping demanding customers happy. “We looked around at other companies that have developed strategies but really liked the way Ritz-Carlton focused on culture and customer service,” says Basson.

If you have stayed in a Ritz-Carlton hotel you will not have noticed it, but a key part of their integration is what they call a Daily Line-Up. The same thing happens at 9am every morning outside the CEO’s office in Atlanta.

“Line-Up is the opportunity to reconnect each employee with their purpose and their mission before they start their day,” says Ritz-Carlton’s blog. “Although there may be many elements to your Line-Up—such as corporate announcements and birthdays—the emphasis should be on your culture and values.”

Ritz-Carlton Line-Ups are led by one employee who reads a company newsletter containing information on what is happening at other hotels, stories relating to corporate values and  updates relevant to each hotel.

It sounds simple but Ritz-Carlton says it is crucial: “This is our number one form of communication with our employees around the world.  It is the glue that connects us daily and keeps our culture alive.”

The Daily Line-Up is just one thing that Luxaviation has learnt from Ritz-Carlton – others include ‘four step service’ and Gold Standard.

Luxaviation’s management team now sends out its own Daily Line-Up email to all employees. They then meet in groups to go through it. A typical Luxaviation Line-Up includes safety messages, stories about how one team has delivered great service to a customer and other information such as new hires.

Employees in different parts of the business aviation company have reacted differently to this idea. Some have embraced it completely and love the initiative. Others have been more sceptical.

“It has been fascinating looking at how different cultures react to the idea,” says Basson. “But it has definitely brought parts of the business together.”

Building an integrated business is also crucial to the company’s future plans.

Keep growing

“There are a lot of internal reasons why most mergers and acquisitions do not work,” says Basson, “and we understand the risks, but the ability to add businesses effectively is core to our future.”

Although Luxaviation has grown to be one of the largest business aviation operators in the world, it still has a market share of less than 3% of all business jets. Luxaviation wants to keep consolidating business aviation.

“We still have not completed integrating Luxaviation’s businesses with ExecuJet, but when we do, we will still keep wanting to consolidate. We are keen to keep acquiring and Hervé as chief integration officer will be a key part of that.”

As Luxaviation’s largest group, ExecuJet has provided a lot of systems and structures that are now being used to integrate the company.

Luxaviation has centralised operations in Cambridge. The Central Operations Support department there provides flight planning, dispatches aircraft, manages Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation (CAMO) requirements and deals with any aircraft needing urgent maintenance. Crew training, planning, travel and administration is also run centrally.

The operator has also created a centralised Group Broker Desk to sell charter on all its AOCs. The desk provides brokers and clients with access to Luxaviation’s fleet of aircraft from every entity of the business, offering more solutions and a quicker and easier charter process for brokers.

“We are keen to free up our local management teams to spend time with our customers,” says Basson. “The more things we can centralise the better.”

Luxaviation is also investing in new technology to both make aircraft management more efficient and also give customers access to reports on maintenance, flights and other information.

“The whole industry needs to improve its reporting. It is common to find operators sending bills months later,” says Basson. “We give customers their final bills seven days after the end of the month and a monthly report, but soon we will be at the point where they can log into an app and go straight into our operating system and see things in real time. You could not invest in this as a smaller operator.”

Basson believes that size matters to aircraft management. “It is a low margin business so economies of scale really make a big difference,” says Basson. “There is a role for smaller operators – up to 10 or 15 aircraft when a lot of it is about client relationships – but above that it gets hard.”

Although, he admits, he is biased as he relishes the bigger challenge. “Business is good across the group. Diversity and multiple business streams help,” says Basson, “and I am enjoying the bigger company. The bigger geography and the bigger variety. But we have just started.”

Basson and his colleagues are now looking for new companies, and more people, to add to Luxaviation’s Daily Line-Up email list.

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