Five Questions with our CEO and Founder, Julia Takeda
What’s in store for the Fly Louie Alliance and its members in 2H 2022?
Meet our founder and CEO, Julia Takeda. We sat down with Julia to talk about the current state of the charter market and to discuss future product strategy for Fly Louie. The Alliance membership roster recently surpassed 300 operators and 3,000 aircraft, which invites the question – what is Fly Louie going to do next with such scale?
Q: The Fly Louie Alliance has a 3 year anniversary on the horizon. How are you feeling about the team and community Fly Louie’s brought together?
A: We have been very fortunate since launching the Alliance to connect with so many talented operators in our space. They’re entrepreneurial, they care a lot about doing good work, and they’re seeking connection with the broader community. And when I look at our team, we have this magical mix of deeply experienced folks from the industry and newcomers with fresh perspectives. Regardless of experience, there’s this underlying curiosity, imagination and drive they all share. The same is true for our other partners, whether an operator, FBO, the Avfuel team, or within the wholesale charter buyers we’ve gotten to work with this past year. It makes the work a lot of fun.
As we’ve gone from a team of 8 to 16 employees in the last year alone, it has also posed the challenge of how we scale culture in a way that keeps us true to our core. This year we formalized our values, and through a collaborative team process we came up with the following: service, compassionate candor, action, boldness, and inclusivity. While the names are new, the presence of these values in our everyday work isn’t. It feels great to now have on paper what we all have been living and breathing for so long.
Q: How is the Fly Louie Team adapting how they serve operators?
A: The goal of the Alliance is to help independent operators compete at scale. For the first two years, that meant leveraging group buying relationships to deliver serious cost savings to operators. Based on our success there, particularly with fuel, we were able to start focusing on operators’ revenues as well. As the industry experienced an unprecedented increase in demand, operators felt the scales of leverage balance out – for so long they had to take what demand they could get, and now they were finally able to be more selective.
But operators are smart and know there are cycles to all this, and so much is driven by long-term trust and relationships. So where we are taking an active role is helping operators position themselves for the highs and the lows. When demand was far outstripping supply, we helped operators find buyers with the willingness to pay market rates - and how to use their leverage in a way that was fair to everyone. Our focus today is on our Revenue Management Programs, helping to connect operators with a diverse group of buyers across multiple ways of selling – through dedications and in the ad hoc market. Our work helps operators to capture trips from a curated selection of demand that fits their unique businesses. By understanding the needs of the operator, we can meet them with technology and innovation to benefit their business. Generally speaking, we are helping to put operators in a position where they are doing great when the market is great, and they are protected when the market slows.
Q: You’ve talked about your Revenue Management Programs. What does that look like in practice and how are you setting Alliance members up for long-term success?
A: Our work focuses on three areas: negotiating contacts, helping them to think about the structures and terms that are most important to their business, and then connecting them with the large charter buyers that make the most sense for them. At the same time, we are working with buyers to identify their needs and to match those needs with the right operators. Buyers are changing how they buy and we are doing work to keep operators agile in how they sell. The multi-touch relationships we have with operators and the extension we’re able to be to buyers’ teams, plus the data and pricing insights we have that support that work, puts us in a unique position to connect them to supply and demand channels that they previously could not access.
Q: Julia, what do you think of the current state of private aviation and how does Fly Louie use buying behavior insights to support its Alliance members?
A: The larger economic indicators are a concern and we saw some softening in demand in the summer - it’s too soon to tell if that’s just normal seasonal shifts or something broader. We’re certainly encouraged to see that travelers who started to fly private during the pandemic are sticking with it, business travel is still on the rebound, and travelers continue to turn to private charters to escape the current headaches of commercial air travel.
And I think operators haven’t minded a bit more relief in the schedule to support pilot retention, to schedule planned maintenance and maybe even steal a couple days of PTO without taking the laptop for once.
Buyers are still buying and demand is high. What’s critical is adapting rapidly and encouraging the same in our operators. I know from experience - it’s hard when you’re running a business and consumed by the day-to-day to take the time to look around corners, solicit market feedback, and plan for the future. We help share that burden for operators and, for many, we have become their strategic partner and advisor. It’s a fulfilling role.
Q: What are you looking forward to in Q4?
A: Moving forward we’re really focused on being able to best serve Alliance operators in the ad hoc charter market, filling holes in operators’ schedules within a one week window of time, rather than just selling long-term dedications or blocks. This requires intelligent technology to support the work of our team, which we are introducing now. As we get into 2023 we’re excited to expand how we use the scale of our business to benefit operators. I think there's an opportunity to support operators in how they source additional aircraft to their fleet, how they think about crew training, and even just in operators’ back offices. Everything that we do is in service of more than 300 Fly Louie Alliance members. We’ll continue to prioritize our efforts to match the business needs that we’re seeing and hearing in daily interactions with our members and preferred partners across all sectors of the industry.
If you have more questions for Julia, or if you’re interested in hearing more about what’s up at Fly Louie, let us know!
