Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief at AIN Media Group, has been flying since 1975 and writing about aviation since 1978 and now has the best job in the world, running editorial operations for Aviation International News, Business Jet Traveler, and FutureFlight.aero. In addition to working as an A&amp;P mechanic on everything from Piper Cubs to turboprops, Matt taught flying at his father’s flight school in Plymouth, Mass., in the early 1980s, flew for an aircraft owner/pilot, and for two summer seasons hunted swordfish near the George’s Banks off the East Coast from a Piper Super Cub. An ATP certificated fixed-wing pilot and CFII and commercial helicopter pilot, Matt is type-rated in the Citation 500 and Gulfstream V/550. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Matt and his team cover the entire aviation scene including business aircraft, helicopters, avionics, safety, manufacturing, charter, fractionals, technology, air transport, advanced air mobility, defense, and other subjects of interest to AIN, BJT, and FutureFlight readers.

Editor-in-Chief

Bombardier manufactures a variety of business aircraft models, provides engineering, and aircraft maintenance services.

Matt Thurber

VistaJet is one of the few companies that brought an aircraft—an ultra-long-range Bombardier Global 7500—to the inaugural Business Aviation Asia Forum &amp; Expo (BAAFEx) in Singapore, demonstrating the significance&nbsp;of the Asia-Pacific market to the charter flight provider.&nbsp;
“It’s always been an important region,” said VistaJet chief commercial officer Ian Moore. “[It’s] about 30% of our revenue and about 30% of our customer base. We’ve been here 16 to 17 years and we remained here during Covid. It's part of our global brand and part of our global service offerings.”
VistaJet's customer base is varied, with people from outside traveling to destinations in Asia and local customers traveling all over the world. The Global 7500 “is a very popular aircraft that connects places like Singapore to San Francisco, for example,” Moore explained. “[We do] a lot of long-range flying to the U.S. West Coast and connecting to the Middle East. But we [also] see our [super midsize] Challenger fleet being very popular here. There's a lot of water in Asia, so lots of flying required connecting to places like Japan, Korea, all the way to the Maldives as well as Hong Kong.”
Unusually among large charter operators, VistaJet owns its fleet and so has complete control over how its aircraft are deployed. While it does offer ad hoc charter bookings, its most popular product is the company's program membership.
"That's a three-year subscription-based model," Moore explained. "You buy a certain amount of hours, say 100 hours per year for three years, and that gets you guaranteed availability into an aircraft category. Like this aircraft, the Global 7500, you get to utilize that fleet wherever you are. You don't have to be in Singapore. You could be in Beijing. Or using a commercial flight to go to New York. And then from New York, you want to use us to go to Florida, for example. Or inside Europe. Typically, the program membership gives you guaranteed availability of our fleet around the world, with 24 hours notice."
With customers spread across the globe, the VistaJet fleet never holds still. “They sleep where the customer last took them,” he said. “So typically we don't go back to a home base. Our entire model was based on having freedom of movement of aircraft, so we don't have a base for the aircraft to come back to. They'll do the maintenance at approved vendors around the world, but otherwise, they're constantly on the move, moving our customers from A to B.”
<h2>Growth in Program Membership</h2>
“Even with the Asia-Pacific [charter] market, which has shrunk a little bit in the last 12 months, we've seen double-digit growth in our program membership,” Moore added, “which shows you the advantages and the popularity of that product. And owning the assets does make it easier to fulfill the customers' needs because you don't have to work with owners…[we don’t have to] ask for owner release or [deal with] an owner changing their mind. All of our aircraft are owned by us and are available to our customers.
“There are multiple advantages to that,” Moore stated. “One of them is that we're able to understand how you'd like to use our fleet. People who fly privately don't all fit in one box. They all fly in a different way. And so we're able to listen to how you want to fly and then tailor a program based around that. We can only do that because we own our fleet. We're also able to make ourselves truly global because we can maneuver our aircraft wherever we want around the world. If that were subject to owner release, you wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't have the aircraft based in one region. By having our aircraft fully owned by us, we can make them fully available wherever our customers are, wherever the demand is, all around the globe, and that's important to our business model.”
VistaJet is well aware of the high cost of flying business aircraft in Asia, but Moore explained that whether a customer is chartering or owns their own aircraft, they face the same airport fees, handling costs, and other expenses related to business aviation operations.&nbsp;
“It comes down to whether or not you want to fly privately or commercially,” he said. “Commercially has some advantages, cost is one of them, but flying privately has many other advantages. [Business aircraft] only go where you want with whom you want to a location you want to go to. It comes down to the cost versus value proposition. We have a strong membership base that tells us that the value is [worth] the cost, especially the anonymity offered by chartered aircraft where passenger identities are kept private."
<h2>Charter Flying is More Discrete</h2>
The discretion that comes with not being directly linked to&nbsp;a particular aircraft tail number is important to some VistaJet clients.&nbsp;“You have that in-built anonymity," Moore explained. "That's why we've been also popular with governments and business people who don't want to tip off their competitors as to where they're going. Even if you buy a fractional share, you're still on a register somewhere. If you buy your own aircraft, you have to register it. We've seen with many high-profile individuals that you can track their aircraft, and that doesn't give you the private experience that you can get with VistaJet.”
The Global 7500 on display this week at the BAAFEx is typical of VistaJet’s fleet. “The full cabin experience is incredibly important,” Moore said. “We have a beautiful galley where the cabin crew can perform miracles. We have a six-seat club area with private dining seating, where we can have a full table across [the cabin]. There is a full stateroom at the back, which helps provide a restful experience, with a fully enclosed bed. In the TV and audio room you can have the kids watch a movie or do your business. With full club seating at the front, it has so much flexibility. The lighting system is based on ensuring that you have minimized the impact of flying [long distance]. It’s a super-quiet aircraft, and it flies at an altitude that gets above most weather. It's it's the most popular aircraft we have, and it's in great demand.”
That said, VistaJet is ready to move its Global 7500s into the next phase of service by retrofitting them to the Global 8000 configuration. Bombardier's 8000 model can fly 8,000 nm at a long-range cruise speed of Mach 0.85 and this will connect city pairs such as Singapore-Los Angeles, Dubai-Houston, and London-Perth. Its top speed is Mach 0.94.
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