Jet Luxe’s ‘fresh approach’ to aircraft charter
Aircraft charter and management firm Jet Luxe is setting new standards for service with its flight care team, according to CEO and founder Gabriel Meza Madrid.
The company, which was founded back in 2020 on the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic, has seen a 54% market expansion over the past four years. Initially based in Dubai and Mexico, in response to rising demand Jet Luxe has expanded to Hong Kong, Miami, the UK and recently Casablanca.
Madrid (pictured below) puts the success of his still relatively young company largely down to the company’s in-house flight care team. Made up predominantly of ex-airline professionals, Jet Luxe took advantage of the redundancies commercial carriers began making once the reality of pandemic-induced travel disruption set in. But the flight care team was not part of the original plan for Jet Luxe.
“In the beginning, I just wanted to build my business. We wanted to grow it, but as it was just me and my brother, we needed to make additions to the business that would allow us to grow without compromising quality,” Madrid told us.
Flight care difference
“At the time the airlines were letting a lot of people go. So I saw an opportunity because commercial airlines, on the whole, have amazing standards of training and service and I believed that could help us grow. Eventually we realised that the flight care team we built is the cornerstone of the company.”
Madrid says that he has worked hard to differentiate Jet Luxe from competitors. He claims most brokers offer you a “plugin and play” solution — usually the operator. Then they will “wing” their other accounts and transactions in the background whilst offering that solution.
“We don’t do that. We took a different approach. We attained certification as one of eight companies in the world as an Argus certified broker. We also took a different approach to service, certifying all of our staff with Forbes Travel Guide. Finally, we doubled down on our dedicated team of flight care agents.”
Today, Jet Luxe’s flight care team handles deployment of Jet Luxe ambassadors, manage the procurement relationship with operators and handle much of the day-to-day operations in the backend. The team looks after so much of the business, Madrid describes it as “both the right and left brain” of the company.
Madrid sees Jet Luxe as an incubator of talent in the business aviation industry. In line with that vision the company regularly hires graduates right out of school. “We are happy to train them. We think of ourselves as the creator of a web behind these young people, offering them protection as they grow into professionals.”
Jet Luxe has been expanding its team exponentially since its founding in 2020 with a team of five covering sales and a further three running operations. “So today we have about 40 people on the sales team, and we see that we can increase this to 70,” said Madrid. “Working on this team is a fantastic opportunity for people new to the industry to take that first step into aviation and understand what they can offer to customers.”
Demand, demand, demand
As noted earlier, Jet Luxe has expanded into numerous regions including, most recently, the opening of an African office in Casablanca, Morocco. Alongside, Latin America — which is home to Jet Luxe’s founders — the African region is seeing some of biggest increases in demand for charter, according to Madrid.
“Mexico has added over 1,000 aircraft in the past five years. This is just Mexico, not including Brazil, Argentina or any other country in Latin America. We see two key areas for growth in this region: transparency and digitisation. The same goes for Africa.
“We partner up with an operator and show them how to deal with a US broker. For instance, they need to have a proper website, proper communication and digital systems to sign documents. We show operators how it is done and eventually they are trading happily with brokers all over the world,” said Madrid. “For me this is amazing, because I have seen Latin American operators go broke because they did not know how to deal with their partners in the north.”
In Africa, the company aims to improve transparency and banking processes to facilitate faster transactions. Madrid gives the example of a friend who runs a charter brokerage in South Africa. He said for her company to receive and send funds out can take up to seven days. This makes operating difficult and sometimes impossible. “So these platforms that we are trying to create are to make aviation faster and more transparent,” added Madrid.
