Flexjet puts on the Ritz – at Farnborough
Flexjet’s new terminal is full of nice touches, including a G700 fuselage lounge, some interesting sculptures and a centrepiece owners’ bar.
An old marketing manager’s trick is to buy advertising billboards along the roads that their bosses take to work. Really Machiavellian marketers do the same thing but for their competitors’ CEOs so they arrive in the office in a bad mood every day.
The same thing is true with private terminals at airports, such as the $34m terminal that Flexjet opened yesterday. It offers an elevated experience for your owners, but the real satisfaction comes from forcing your competitors’ customers to taxi past your logo whenever they visit the airport.
Flexjet’s new terminal is full of nice touches, including a G700 fuselage lounge, some interesting sculptures and a centrepiece owners’ bar. The terminal will also be used for the RedLabel Training of Flexjet’s cabin servers – and fractional owners can watch this taking place.
“It was very deliberate decision to open up the RedLabel Training,” Mike Silvestro, CEO, Flexjet tells CJI. “It is a like a chef’s table at a restaurant. We want to show owners some of the secret sauce behind Flexjet.”
The training centre is overseen by Francesco Vanerio, Flexjet’s chief steward, who is responsible for making sure Flexjet’s roughly 300 cabin crew offer exceptional service. Vanerio joined Flexjet from Lake Como’s Villa D’Este (which by an amazing coincidence happens to be Flexjet’s founder Kenn Ricci’s favourite hotel). It features a range of kitchens the same size as on Flexjet’s fleet. At the end of each two-week course, cabin crew will use the G700 fuselage lounge to demonstrate everything they have learnt.
Vanerio says that a key part of the job is adapting. “You have seven seconds to understand what type of flight it is and what is the passenger’s expectation,” says Vanerio.
“The secret of service is to understand what level of service the passengers want. They may be coming back from a big meeting and just want to kick their shoes off, have nuts and beer, and shut down from the world or they may want to celebrate. The human piece is the most important thing. If you don’t understand what the expectation and what type of flight that is, it doesn’t matter if you provide perfect service, you didn’t understand the person.”
Silvestro says that the new terminal is all about Flexjet continuing to “elevate private aviation”. He adds: “What you see here is truly authentic. We’re not trying to be social, we just are. It’s an extension of our personality.”
Flexjet will soon have nine private terminals in the US (including its well-established one at Teterboro Airport). You can expect that to increase. It also now owns The Jet Business showroom in London. One other way to annoy competitors/attract more customers would be to take a Flexjet showroom concept to other city centres.
