CJI Middle East & Africa 2020: The value of data and why it’s key for growth
Making the costs of business aviation much more transparent for owners and operators is the key to maximising the growth potential of the sector, said Mark Winzar, Senior Vice President Business Development at Jet Support Services Inc. (JSSI), at CJI’s Middle East & Africa online conference.
“It’s clear to me, this is an opaque market with lack of visibility [about operation and maintenance costs] that will ultimately limit growth. We see it does happen,” said Winzar. “We need to use the data to get out of an opaque market.”
The JSSI boss identified the figure of $32bn as the annual spend for services, maintenance fees and more in the business aviation sector. “We need to be able to articulate how that money is being spent and its true value. It’s difficult to go back to an owner with a $3.2m bill without transparency.”
90% of owners
The need for transparency about costs was heightened by the fact that 90% of owners have very limited aviation industry knowledge and only 10% are aviation professionals, according to JSSI research. “So, that’s a huge scale of problem and why data should be used for absolute transparency.”
JSSI was working to improve transparency, based on the information generated by the 2,000 business aircraft on its programme and the 10,000-plus maintenance invoices generated every year.
10,000-plus maintenance invoices
One solution might be to follow the example of commercial aviation. “Although the commercial world is down in the dumps at the moment, it uses analytics and data to drive down costs,” said Winzar. “It’s feasible to get that into the private aviation sector.”
That could be achieved by introducing a centralised database for bench marking actual cost data, he suggested. It could be used to set industry standards and to keep to them. This would enable business aviation could use analytics as best practice to help guide decision making.
“JSSI is looking to create an environment where data is readily available to allow us [the business aviation sector] to make more informed decisions,” Winzar concluded.
Without transparency – at a glance
- Owners: Forced to accept ‘the cost is the cost’
- OEMs: Lose opportunity for aircraft and sales
- Management companies: Forced to impose costs elsewhere to cover reduced fees
- Financial institutions: Struggle to anticipate operating budgets. That makes them less inclined to lend money and to keep market stimulus going.
