Keeping a flight department flying in 2026

Every year brings with it a fresh problem for the flight department to negotiate, but each, says Patnode, provides further proof of Pfizer’s concept.

Murphy in cockpit, Uncle Sam in the Middle East. How do flight departments stay in the air, enabling their executives to continue to deliver?

The answer, according to Chad Patnode, flight operations manager at Pfizer, is preparation. But such a level of contingency can only be achieved through reliance on an established network of contacts and resources.

“I’ve used this line a few million times, but it’s about figuring out what you don’t know,” Patnode tells us.

This year has been one of the craziest on record for Patnode. Aside from bread and butter operational challenges like mechanical issues, icing events and bad weather, the outbreak of conflict between the US, Israel and Iran, as well as ongoing conflict in Ukraine and parts of Africa, means Patnode hasn’t had a day off in a long time.

On top of that, he says regulations on the movement of people, such as the European Union’s agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA), are making the world “a lot more complicated to operate in”.

“It seems to be on a constantly upward trend. It seems like every country’s doing its own version of some sort of API [Advanced Passenger Information] or visa, you have to stay on your toes,” he says. “Have the best resources you can think of to lean on when it comes to finding out what you need to operate into, out of and over every country. I think that’s probably been the biggest surprise of it all — just trying to stay ahead of that.

“As flight hours and the flight schedule, it’s pretty standard, but it’s different in terms of the complexities of these trips.”

Patnode, who sits on the leadership board of NBAA’s International Operators Committee (IOC), says the committee has been an invaluable resource in extending his network of contacts. Numerous board members are heads of their regional business aviation association.

“This means they’re completely in tune with what’s going on and what’s coming down the pipe,” he says. “International service providers and the ops group provide such a wonderful service. But then on the other side, when you’re talking with the IOC or other major representatives in the industry, you can almost see what’s coming down the road. To me, that leads to feeling like a more well-rounded dispatch group, because we can reach out to so many different people with different perspectives.”

Trust the process

As might be expected, overflying the Middle East presents the greatest challenge for corporate flight departments due to its high-risk nature. Pfizer has operated a handful of missions of this nature since the outbreak of conflict in February. Prepping for these flights begins early –sometimes even the year before. In these cases, Patnode’s “Rolodex” varies.

He usually starts by calling an international service provider. “Get their intel. I’ll speak to their head flight planners and ask what routes they’ve been planning,” he says. “I will then likely call other IOC committee members asking what they’re hearing. I will also ring other flight departments.”

Patnode urges flight departments, irrespective of size, to get as involved in the industry as possible. Many of his team members volunteer their time across several industry groups, advisory boards and NBAA committees.

“We’re really involved with NBAA, with networking, with trying to be leaders in this industry. I think it puts us at a huge advantage. To be successful in this industry, it’s about building the most solid network you can,” he says. “You can’t know everything — it’s impossible. I know very little, but I know who to reach out to. And I think that’s what makes me valuable, and what makes me valuable to our flight crew members, because if I don’t know an answer to something, I’m not going to hop on ChatGPT to do it. I’m going to reach out to people who have done this recently and get their lessons learned.”

A network like Patnode’s was not built without giving as good as he gets. He often takes calls from other flight departments and industry stakeholders with questions on upcoming flights.

“If I don’t have an answer for them, I just point them to where I would go,””he says. “International service providers provide an amazing service — they’re well in tune with what’s going on. But again, to me, it’s about corroboration. If we use a provider, I’’l take what they say and have someone else back it up, especially if it’s urgent or in the high-risk space. I don’t want to go to just one source because it could be fallible. This is my advice for those who call me too.”

Being the nucleus

Patnode says an effective flight department has the dispatch team as the “nucleus” of the operation. He believes many departments farm the intelligence function out to international service providers or flight solutions companies.

“These third-party companies have very little skin in the game — they’re client-based, with a thousand different clients. They don’t know the culture of the flight department or the schedule of the executives or customers,” he says.

“How can you get invested in a flight department when you’re not in it? We’ve done a complete 180: instead of those companies semi-running the flight department, it’s us. We use service providers every day and all sorts of resources — we’re the nucleus of the department. We take that information, we vet it, we question it, we’re responsible for it. Having that accountability and responsibility inside your flight department instead of on the outside is what’s made us a unicorn in the industry.”

Although Patnode’s middle name isn’t contingency, it probably should be. He is clear that he and his department do not like being pioneers.

“It’s like driving during a winter storm: I’m going to follow these tracks and hope they don’t go into the ditch. I’m afraid of making the tracks. There have been very few times where we’ve been pioneers, because with our network and partnerships, we’ve had great insight before doing something,” he says.

One example is operating in areas exposed to GPS jamming and spoofing threats. Before flying the trip, Patnode spoke to three operators who had recently flown similar missions.

“We went into that trip not knowing exactly when we’d get spoofed or jammed — we expected it would happen — but we were ready to take action when it did. As soon as we did, we had the process in place and it worked like a charm,” he explains.

“I think that’s a great example of how we — and how I feel all operators should — operate. You’re not ploughing your own field. I hate being in that position, and thankfully we’re very rarely in that spot.”

Benefits of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also coming in handy. Pfizer has started using Microsoft Co-pilot in-house to pull up trip information from its operations history.

In the past, Patnode would take his checklist and all other information saved on the hard drive and scroll through them to see when the team last went somewhere — “it took forever”. “I think that’s where AI is most useful,” he says. “I’m very hesitant with using AI for decision-making, at least right now. But for record-keeping and putting together dispatch packages, it’s been pretty good.”

New year, same process

Pulling up the checklist at the entering of a prompt certainly saves time for Patnode’s team, but unless the experience and processes that back up that checklist are capable of meeting the challenge at hand, it’s useless.

Every year brings with it a fresh problem for the flight department to negotiate, but each, says Patnode, provides further proof of Pfizer’s concept. He says the checklist casts a net over every trip, capturing every scenario and offering contingency.

“You have to have standardised checklists, and they have to be fluid documents that are always being tweaked,” he explains. “That’s where the lessons learned come in. We have a debrief at the end of a trip.”

The flight department gives a debrief form to all crew members after each trip which acts as an extension of its international checklist. The crew either fill it out en route or within seven days of returning home.

“It captures what worked and what didn’t — even for simple trips. We record all that information and recompile it so that when we eventually go back to that part of the world, the pilots get notes from however many trips or years ago, so we’re not making the same mistakes again.”

Obviously that information can get outdated, but Patnode says it gives the team something extra to work on with the handler on the ground. “We were here three years ago and this happened — is that going to be an issue again? It allows us not to make the same mistakes and to know what we should ask,” he says. 

“You have to figure out what you don’t know with knowing what you know. That is the name of the game.”