Sentient Jet CEO on Private Aviation Trends

remains very busy. Let's talk about private aircraft travel. We can do that with Andrew Collins, President and chief executive officer of Sentient Jet. He joined us on the phone from Boston. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us here. Again, just from my little sample here in New Jersey, it seems like private jet travel remains very active. Give us a sense of how it's evolved during this pandemic. Sure,

thanks for having me on. It's great to be back. Um. Listen, the pandemic has obviously been you know, something very unfortunate for the world. Uh, it is a specially hit commercial airlines. As you pointed out, I think yesterday, which would have been a peak travel day, they saw half of what they would normally see go through you know, your t s A checkpoints. Meanwhile, private aviation, you know, our business right now is up ten in flight volume year over year.

So people are looking to avoid crowds and they are seeking alternative solutions. And what we've seen was a bit of a dip at the beginning of the pandemic and then a curve upward in growth, uh, you know, progressively each month as more and more people and especially people that haven't really flown privately before, start to discover, um, you know, some of the benefits of being able to avoid exposure points and being able to control the crowds

and and travel privately. So and it just seems to me, and maybe I'm just a tune to this because I like aviation, but I just see more and more companies offering more and more types of private travel options, whether it's a you know, a shared plane, you know, cards with mileage on it. It just seems to be so

many more options for consumers. Has that driven the demand for this, I guess private jet travel all over the last ten twenty years, So, you know, it's an interesting point ball, which is you know, accessing private jets has gotten incrementally easier over the years. We invented something called the Private Jet Card and we lead the category globally. You just pre purchased twenty five hours of time. It's

one way to access private jets. Other models include fractional where you purchase part of an asset a jet or you charter a jet on demand, and it's become much more prevalent for business models and unique business models at that.

And I see a lot of creativity in the space. Look, we think that you know, our model has really, you know, hit kind of a wheelhouse moment here, and people just need to fly and they need flexibility, and something like a jet card, you know, provides that you don't have to go through kind of the arduous process of purchasing an asset or purchasing a jet. But I think it really boils down to your profile. And there's certainly a

lot of great companies in the space. And uh, again, you're right, it's it's been something that I think we've seen the models and and and the actual addressable market expand over time. What's an hour on a sentiment jet go for these days? So on a sentient light jet. You're starting at about for one way flying, um, and it can go up from there. And we offer light, mid,

super mid, and large cabin aircraft. And you know, as the name denotes, once you start approaching large cabin, it's about flying you know, ten to twelve people and going uh, you know, fairly long distances and such. But it's a very flexible model. And you know, within ten hours advanced notice, we can January and the forty eight contiguous United States on a jet. What a hey, what are the types of flights that people are buying here? Are they just

going to their vacation homes and getting away from the cities? Yeah? Great, great question and something We've really been observing a couple of things that I'm seeing trend wise, So due to the pandemic, as I mentioned, you're seeing a lot of new entrants. Normally we would see people that about a third of our customers are a third of our our client purchases in a given month would be new clients. It's actually flipped. It's two thirds now new clients, one

third returning clients. Um, they're going to warm weather destinations. You can imagine that West Pond Beach, parts of Florida, the Caribbean, or you know, spaced out destinations for social distancing and activity. Aspen is a big one, Montana's another one. Um And the thing that we've also noticed is there's been a drop in around trips. So people that can actually you know, work virtually and school virtually are going

places and they're staying there. And and this is the first for for our business because we're used to seeing people kind of go out and back in a few days. Uh, and that's one of the beauties of private aviation, but they're actually taking one ways out and staying for for quite some time. Andrew, you know, one of the issues when we saw this pandemic come we obviously saw air travel,

you know, drop off a cliff. And now as people start to think about how air travel is going to come back, there seems to be a consensus that leisure travel will come back rather quickly while they robustly, but business travel maybe structurally uh smaller, or people will travel less than they did before the pandemic. How are you guys at sent In thinking about that and how's that changing your strategy? I think we're thinking less zoom and

more jet That's okay. But I think at the end of the day, you're right, personal travel is really fueling our business right now, and I think that's going to continue. Um. We are having our biggest sales month in company history in twenty one years this month, so there's a lot of forward purchasing and pent up demand. I do think we are a precursor to kind of you know, predictively

seeing where the consumers going. I would tell you on the business side, the flying that we think we're gonna see is really you know around folks that are transactional, small deal teams. You know your investment banking, you know your consultants, you know those type of folks where in person just is a necessity, right. You know, you can't just do due diligence in a data room. You're gonna have to do it in person at times. So I do think that there is a competitive landscape out there

that's going to need um things like private travel. I think to get back to the business travel, that first class business travel on the commercial side, it is going to take time. Um, but I do think you're gonna see a personal curve kind of grow and and my guess is probably midyear really start to unleash. So what type of four I guess view do you have on your revenue are to help far out to people typically book time. So you know, look, we're top line right now,

we're about a three million dollar company. UM, My guess is we will probably grow somewhere between twenty and um in one barring you know, any sort of uncontrollable or unforeseen thing like a macroeconomic dip or something like that. But the way that we're forecasting and looking out, that's what we see again, a lot of it fueled by

you know, that personal level of travel. Um, I will say that that you know, I have to believe that is going to bring back a really healthy set of revenue streams over time, both for commercial as well as for private. And as you guys were just talking, we need airlines, we need private aviation, we need people back up flying and doing things. For lack of a better way of saying it, Andrew, where do you source your planes,

source your crews? And how has that changed or how do you think that may change, you know, post pandemic. Great questions. So we've actually created a certified process that we've developed. It's cost us millions of dollars to do. We certify the best jet operators in the business. We only use about of the operators out there. Um, all crews are certified. We go through a proprietary database of millions of records per flight to make sure that everything

is is where it needs to be. But where it's changed And I don't even want to say change because I feel like we've been doing this, But where we've enhanced visibility is around kind of that health journey and those protocols. I don't think we're going to get away from, you know, the true sanitization that's happening. We certify now are are ground providers to make sure that environments are clean and sterile, to make sure that crews or drivers

are math socially distanced. Uh, there are pre flight checks. There's a number of things. I don't see that going away, right. So even as the pandemic, I think the best word I've heard dims because it doesn't just disappear in a binary sense. I think you're going to see these things remain and they really resonate. I mean I have to

say that. Um, there's a reason that a lot of people are coming off the sidelines to fly with us, and a lot of it has to do with how we've looked at sourcing our aircraft and sourcing our crews, and and looking at those health protocols. So, you know, one of the issues for the airlines. I guess at some point they're gonna have to try to, you know, get the message across the people that it's actually safe to get on an airplane. And that kind of brings it back to an issue. I don't recall too many

stories of super spreader events emanating from air travel. I mean, give us a sense of what, you know, ten months of hindsight here, how is air travel faired relative, you know, in terms of spreading the virus. So I feel like, um, there's been you know, an unjust kind of bias, especially placed on commercial where you know, you're kind of led to believe that it's unhealthy to fly on a commercial aircraft. I don't believe that's true. I believe there's exposure points.

I do think in the commercial journey there's a lot more than say flying privately. But in general, you know, you've seen the highlighted pieces where you know, perhaps somebody was on an aircraft and then other people were infected at a commercial level, but they have not been to the extent or almost to the manic nature by which they've been you know, discussed or talked about. UM. So, I don't think that air travel is really going to end up being something in hindsight where you're going to

see a lot of super spreader events. And I do think that, you know, if there's a silver lining to this, the exposure of just how much work goes into you know, cleansing and sterilizing aircraft and putting people into a safe environment, I think is really gonna emanate from this, and I think that's going to be something that you know, our industry should be held accountable for. All Right, Andrew, I'm asking this question on behalf of our our Bloomberg colleague,

Tom Keene. What's the top of the line aircraft that you offer and what will that do for me? How far will it take me? How many people can I bring along? All that kind of fun stuff? So we can put you on like a Global Express. We could put you on a gulf Stream six fifty. You could go transatlantic. You could put you know a dozen people on board, uh and feel very spacious and comfortable. You'll have a flight attendant and a crew and you could pretty much go where you want to go um without

you know, any sort of fuel stops. So that's really the we call that the large cabin aircraft. And and and that's one that you know, Tom would certainly enjoy and and probably feel like you really conquered the universe. And one of those So is your business? Is your business global or is it primarily domestic? So it it is global. We purchased a company in Europe. UM we

do fly internationally. We have set rates internationally. That said, about eight percent of our business right now is within the forty eight contiguous United States, but that is declining rapidly as we push on into different international waters. Andrew, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Just the fascinating business and it really interesting to see how your business has evolved here during the pandemic. Andrew Collins, he's

president and chief executive officer of Sentient Jet. He joined us on the phone from Boston.