Cityjet CEO Update

Transcript

Pat Byrne:I think that in these days it's extremely difficult to really promote a brand that isn't widely recognized. While we are well recognized at London City, in other networks we would not be as recognized. So really in the future, where we will hold on to our brand, we will see more and more of Obviously, wet lease is our main business, and we've now got that to 80%. For scheduled flying, we want to de-risk the scheduled flying for ourselves on our own risk, so we would actually look to franchise, and franchise with established brands, and have a very small, maybe 10% of our activity under our own brand, because it is a very expensive business trying to promote an unknown brand. So I think for a regional airline, you know, to have an over-dependency on own-risk activity is a recipe for disaster, and, you know, the graveyards are full of regional airlines that have gone down that route and haven't made it. So we believe that you really have to have an enormous amount of your revenues guaranteed and focus on being a really good, efficient, safe operator where you can offer a very credible service to people who've got bigger distribution power than you could ever dream of. I think that, you know, really what we're doing is promoting the— what what they call in America the CPA, or Capacity Purchase Agreement contracts between the regionals and the mainlines, with a little bit of a twist where we will still retain some own brand recognition and we will still do— we do very well actually in the charter market, especially sports and entertainment categories where we are actually well known. Our brand does actually work in those markets quite well. I also think it's very important from a staff point of view I think it's very important that you retain some element of your own brand because it's not just a logo, but it is actually a call to action. It is a semblance of standards, and I think that wet lease customers, potential wet lease customers, will look at how we look after our own brand and how we look after our own passengers and say, well, we'd like some of that. That actually will transfer very well for us in a wet lease situation. I think, well, certainly size doesn't really matter. Profitability does matter, but if the two coincide and if that means that we end up being the largest, then so be it. But I think as it happens, we probably will be the largest wet lease operator in Europe. Pilots. We haven't got to drones yet, so— I jest. No, pilots are critical. I think that they're in short supply. And I think that the industry generally faces a collective challenge where we're not paying enough attention to really promoting the career of a professional pilot as a very worthwhile profession. And I think that in second-level education in particular, we're missing a trick. We're not in the schools, we're not promoting the career of a pilot as a really worthy pursuit. And I think that we have to up our game there. I also think that airlines have to go back into the domain of paying for pilot training and not expecting students to do it themselves. Because what happens then is we call it the Papa Has Dough, the PhDs. So if Papa has dough, they're the guys who will actually go through flight school. But we're probably missing an enormous amount of talent. Because we're only seeing the people who can actually afford to pay for it. We're not seeing the people who've probably got incredible aptitude and don't have the opportunity because at £100,000 to get your commercial license to airline standards, that's a lot of money. CityJet's vision is to be the premier wet leasing provider in Europe.

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