Ready, Jet, Go!

By: By Lisa Sweetingham | January 18, 2012 |

“We have a saying around here,” says XOJET CEO Blair LaCorte. “No one really cares how smart you are until they know that you care about them.” Maybe so, but let’s be clear: Business smarts have definitely played a role in XOJET’s near-overnight success in the private jet industry. Still, as LaCorte notes, what seems to make XOJET stand out is its rare brand of engagement with its customers.

Case in point: LaCorte speaks fondly of a woman who, a year ago, phoned XOJET in tears from Florida, hoping to charter a last-second flight to Washington D.C. to rush to the hospital bedside of her husband, who had just suffered a heart attack.

“She and her husband were regular customers, and while it certainly was not the best financial decision for us as we had to move six different planes around, it was the right decision,” LaCorte recalls. “We made a commitment to her and had her on a plane to D.C. in 45 minutes.” The client and her husband, who recovered from the health scare, have been devoted XOJET members ever since.

And the anecdotes abound: from crew members outfitting a plane with special dog bowls and treats to surprise pet-toting travelers, to off-duty XOJET pilots renting a van and driving two hours out of their way to help a family get all their luggage home in one trip. Is this touchy-feely customization the future of private jet travel?

“Customer service shouldn’t be defined by normal standards, because life isn’t normal,” LaCorte says. “Some days are easy and some are difficult.”

And yet “difficult” was practically the industry byword until XOJET was founded in 2006. At the time, anyone seeking out private jet service had, essentially, three options: buy a very expensive plane outright; roll the dice and charter a plane on a case-by-case basis (and pay through the nose); or buy into a time-share membership or fractional-ownership program (and good luck during peak flying times).

The onus, in all of these scenarios, fell squarely on the customer to select a single plane or membership product that could meet the entirety of his or her ongoing needs. Kind of akin to hiring a general contractor to build your dream home on Broad Beach—and then letting that person make every decision from the number of bedrooms to move-in date. “You really had to choose whether you wanted customer service, value or quality,” LaCorte says.

XOJET entered the market with a not-so-subtle mission to shake up the old order. According to LaCorte, the idea was: Let’s create a totally new business model that lets every passenger make his or her own airline. Call it mass customization. You put money into an account and then you are free to choose when and how you want to fly. It sounds simple enough, but it was a revolutionary idea for an industry where nothing had really changed in almost 20 years.

“We didn’t necessarily replace the products that were available, but we added a new, more interactive product type that completely redefined the service model,” LaCorte says. “We start the process by sitting down with clients to find out what they need, to customize the membership to the way they’ll use the jet—so they’re not buying one jet type or a set number of hours.”

In other words, by combining private jet ownership with highly flexible charter travel and membership programs, XOJET is able to give clients exactly what they need, when they need it, at the best possible price and standard of customer service.

And because XOJET owns and operates its entire fleet, it has the ability to provide a portfolio of travel options: from guaranteed access and fixed-price rates on popular flights between more than 22,000 airport pairs to helping clients create bespoke itineraries with maximum value.

“What we offer is a collaboration—and a conversation—to help you select the right product,” La Corte says, adding that “90 percent of the time, that conversation revolves around the topic: ‘Let’s find out if we can get you a better deal.’”

For example, members of XOJET’s Preferred Access program enjoy priority access to the company’s entire fleet of Cessna Citation X (the world’s fastest civilian airplane, flying just short of the sound barrier at Mach .92) and Bombardier Challenger 300 jets (a veritable executive office in the sky). But they’re also assigned a private aviation consultant who researches ways to lower costs through small itinerary changes, such as, say, flying at off-peak hours or arriving in Oakland—where there’s no landing fee—rather than San Francisco.

For clients who straddle the East–West coast divide more than three times a year, XOJET recently rolled out Coast2Coast, the first transcontinental program to reward bicoastal fliers. For $115,000 (about 25- to 50-percent less than comparable competitor programs), members receive 25 hours and guaranteed anytime travel on more than 100 routes between 27 U.S. East and West Coast airports—with no black-out dates, schedule-change fees or ferry charges.

“That program is a perfect example of how, if you fly coast to coast more than three times a year, we’ll pass on the efficiency gains to you,” LaCorte says. “It’s one of the ways we try to build relationships with our customers.”

It’s also a transparent way of doing business, akin to XOJET’s “all-in” fixed-pricing packages that were announced this summer, whereby the company openly publishes fixed rates (starting at about $12,000, and including their popular $19,000 flight to/from L.A. and N.Y.) on more than 15,000 routes (from major U.S. cities as well as such leisure-travel destinations as Martha’s Vineyard, Napa and Palm Springs)—all in an effort to take the guesswork out of the complicated quotes and negotiations that fliers routinely encounter with private charter outfits.

If LaCorte and his colleagues had any doubts in the beginning if this new model would work, they’re long gone by now as XOJET has become one of the fastest-growing private aviation companies in history. Since its inception, it’s served more than 3,500 customers worldwide and employed about 180 full-time pilots who’ve logged more than 10 million miles in travel—all while adhering to stringent safety standards. (XOJET is the only business aviation provider to rank either No. 1 or No. 2 in all 12 Aviation Research Group/US Platinum safety-rating categories.)

And at a time when consumers are relying more than ever on word-of-mouth and peer review, XOJET has achieved a phenomenal 75 percent of new customers by way of referral, compared to an industry average of about 15 percent.

Even more compelling, as the private aviation sector finds itself in the midst of a long recovery, XOJET actually saw a 40 percent growth in 2011, necessitating an upgrade to its fleet with a recent order of 12 custom Hawker Beechcraft 800XP jets. That order—a potential $50 million commitment on the part of XOJET—was spurred by the company’s constant gut-checking, or as LaCorte describes it, the question they are always asking themselves: “Are we serving our customer’s needs?”

“We have a large group of clients who love using our company, but when they needed to take shorter trips with less than six people, they felt they could have probably used a smaller plane,” he explains. “So we decided to buy and customize a group of Hawkers, just to give those clients more choices.”

XOJET’s announcement last summer that it had partnered with Aircell to provide high-speed Internet on its entire fleet was another innovation born from customer feedback and collaboration.

“A lot of people in the industry announced they’d put Wi-Fi on their planes and then they’d just put it on one plane, or none at all. So we made a distinct decision that we wouldn’t announce our ‘Why Fly without Wi-Fi’ initiative until it was done and we could guarantee it on every single plane,” LaCorte says. Almost two years later, XOJET is still the only private aviation company that can guarantee that their customers will have Wi-Fi on every flight.

LaCorte summarizes XOJET’s success in terms of trust. “People tell us all the time that they keep coming back to us because we do what we say we’ll do—and we’re transparent about pricing. We’ve gained the trust of a lot of customers who felt as if they’d been nickel and dimed in the past by other companies,” he explains.

Flexibility, value and transparency have helped catapult XOJET to the top in just a short six years. But one could argue that its sustained success will depend on whether its employees—from the sales team, to the travel consultants, to the pilots on their days off—continue to exert a genuine interest in serving clients well.

“Relationships have to be judged over time,” LaCorte concedes. “Sometimes, you just need to go the extra mile for that relationship.”