With your cast-iron and compelling business plan having successfully
secured your airline its crucial startup funding,
it's time to move things forward and start putting the essential pieces of your airline together.
There’s a lot of work up ahead, but the sooner you start, the sooner you fly!
It would be impossible at this stage to produce an exhaustive list of everything
that you might need to start your airline, but you’ll need to consider the minor items,
such as crew name badges, all the way up to replacement spare engines for your fleet.
Everything needs to be considered, listed, and procured, all before you start operating.
Today’s video will not provide you with an itemized shopping list of all
the items you need to start an airline, but it will give you a guide to set you
off on a course to consider at least some of the most important things.
But first thing’s first. If you haven't already, now is the time to name your airline.
Without a name in place, very little else will be able to proceed. While your business plan
may have stated “Airline X,” or an interim code name, now is the time to pick something official.
Your chosen name must sell your airline to your potential customers. It must also appeal
to suppliers and other stakeholders and ultimately make your airline stand out from the crowd and get
noticed. It must instill in your future passengers a sense of desire to want to use your airline,
to feel confident that your airline will provide a reliable and safe travel option,
and that, in simple terms, you know what you are doing.
Along with a name will come your airline logo. Sometimes, this will be the same
thing - which is what is known as a wordmark. Think of easyJet, PLAY, and Flybe as examples.
Or, it may be a unique symbol that compliments your airline's name,
such as the 'thumbs up' motif being used by new startup Bonza in Australia.
Your airline's name will be seen everywhere, from boarding cards to airport departure boards
and from billboard advertisements to the sides of baggage carts.
Without a strong name and accompanying logo, you risk failing to capture the public's imagination.
You might feel as though you can come up with a unique and catchy
airline name on your own and pair this with an eye-catching logo. However,
you might prefer to use the services of a marketing agency to do this on your behalf.
As we discovered in our previous episode, almost everything you do to start your
airline will cost you money. And while the services offered by marketing agencies and
consultancies do not come cheap, the investment might be the difference
between your airline succeeding to fly or, ultimately, failing to take off.
Once you have settled on your airline's name and logo, it will be time to get your
chosen name out there and start selling your airline and its proposed services.
In the last three decades, the importance of a solid online presence has gone from a
'nice-to-have' to essential. Without such a presence,
it is hard to imagine how you will attract any groups you need to make your airline work.
Your airline's website will be the company's 24/7 shop window,
where anyone in the world can take a sneak peek at your offering at any time, day or night.
Airlines spend millions on website design and development for justifiable reasons.
Without a clear, well-designed website, your potential customers may switch to your competitors
whose websites and online booking facilities may be quicker
and easier to navigate. The loss of a single customer through this switch
is one less filled seat on your plane and fewer passengers' travel dollars in your pocket.
And now more than ever, you should get your social media presence up and running early. Even if you
have little news as you develop your airline, it’s important to give hints and build anticipation.
Building a mailing list today of your potential early customers tomorrow
will prove invaluable when you begin selling your airline's services in the future.
Once you are up and running with your online presence, work hard to get as many views as
possible on your various channels. The more people who see your name and get to know it early on,
the more likely you will be to build a solid and loyal following for your brand.
Getting your airline to launch day will take strong leadership from the outset.
Early recruitment of your lead management postholders is essential. And however keen
you may be to take on much of the work yourself, it is most certainly not advisable to do so.
Starting and running an airline is a highly technical operation,
and it will require expertise and experience from the very beginning.
While some key posts are crucial for any business, specific positions within an airline are required
for regulatory and oversight reasons. Filling these roles with individuals with specialist
know-how will not only satisfy the authorities under whose jurisdiction your airline will
operate, but it will also improve your airline's chances of operating its first revenue flight.
In any airline operation, you should consider recruiting to fill the following roles as early
as possible in the process. We’ll list all of the positions but only read out some of them…
A CEO or Managing Director
A Chief Financial Officer A Chief Commercial Officer
A Director of Maintenance and Engineering Directors of Marketing, sales, and operations,
Managers for safety, training, and fleet,
And many more.
Only those with direct airline experience should be recruited for some of the roles we listed.
Your regulatory body will conduct regular audits throughout the startup process and will require
demonstrating that your airline can operate safely before any operating license is issued.
These audits will also continue once operations have commenced,
so there will be no room for complacency.
Getting the balance right between age, experience, and expert knowledge during
your initial recruitment drive may determine whether your airline ever takes to the skies.
And as a side note, remember that all those individuals filling the roles above will
require pay and benefits for months (if not years) before your airline begins earning any revenue!
Naturally, any new airline will need a headquarters and a home operating base,
which may or may not be in the same location. Airlines will often have their offices located
close to the airport, which acts as their primary hub, but this is not always the case.
Office space that will ultimately accommodate all of the vital administrative functions must
be secured early on, particularly if you wish for a specific location, building, or preference for
your proximity to an airport. Of course, your initial planning as part of formulating your
business plan should have identified your chosen location from where your airline will operate.
When selecting where to locate your headquarters, consider cost and whether there is room for
growth; you don't wasn't to be signing a ten-year lease if you will out-grow it sooner.
Also consider transportation links to your chosen site and how easy it will
be for staff to commute there, park there, and, most importantly, enjoy working there.
If you have to offer financial incentives for the new team to leave their existing employment to
come and join your airline at its new location, this may be a further cost to factor in.
Next, you’ll need to furnish and equip your offices with IT facilities,
catering facilities for staff, and dealing with a seemingly endless
list of tweaks and modifications so that it is fit for purpose.
You will also need to consider space at the airport for your airline;
this will range from customer service desks within airport terminals
to signing extensive long-term leases to use airport 'jet bridges' or other facilities.
Also think about if you want to operate your own lounge facilities for premium passengers.
Depending on how you intend to maintain your fleet of aircraft will have a significant impact
on your costs at this stage. Should you decide to carry out all of your maintenance in-house,
you will need a hangar, lots of experienced and licensed staff working shifts around the clock,
engineering tooling, equipment, and an extensive range of spare parts always in stock.
Often airline startups will outsource engineering support to a third-party specialist organization,
often referred to as a Maintenace, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) operator.
This could be more expensive in the long run but much cheaper upfront.
At the same time, your airline should employ its own 'line' maintenance
engineers to carry out the day-to-day work and overnight routine checks on your fleet.
Either way, you will have to find the model that works for your airline that keeps the
aircraft serviceable. Ensuring planes are in the air earning money rather than on the ground
means that your customers are kept both safe and happy at all times. Safety,
after all, will always be your number one priority. As the well-used aviation
saying warns, "if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident."
It would be best if you gave early consideration to the carriage of cargo.
You’ll have thought about this already if your new airline is cargo-only.
However, if you are setting up a passenger airline, ask yourself if you’ll be carrying
freight in the belly holds of your aircraft, and if so, how do you intend to win such business?
Will you set up your own cargo division? Will you seek exclusive deals with specific freight
forwarders? Or will you open your cargo capacity up to the broader worldwide freight market?
You should also not forget the express parcels and mail industries in your plans.
Appointing a head of cargo early on may well assist in bringing
all-important additional revenue to your operation, rather than just flying
fresh air around in otherwise empty belly cargo holds, earning your airline nothing.
Lastly, if you are carrying cargo, you will need to address customs arrangements and clearances,
special handling needs that your operation might require
(such as chilled and ambient produce warehousing),
and specialized cargo loading equipment, naming but a few of the necessary items.
Once all of the above are in place, you will need to start equipping your airline.
As mentioned at the start, there will be very obvious items that you will need,
yet there will also be a seemingly endless array of equipment at every level of your business
that you are likely not to have even heard of, let alone considered.
Making an early start of setting up tendering and procurement services for
your airline will, along with the recruitment of an experienced aviation-purchasing-professional,
should help greatly.
Beyond spare parts and napkins, full, intact, and operational aircraft will obviously need
to be acquired. But that’s actually something we’re saving for the next episode of this series!
As mentioned previously, your airline will be required to satisfy the regulatory body
under which it will operate on a range of levels at all times.
From oversight of safety procedures to issuing the licenses and permits your
airline needs to operate as a revenue business, satisfying that regulatory body is fundamental.
The earlier these processes are started, the more likely your airline will keep
to its planned launch schedule. The subject of licenses, permits,
and regulations will be covered in greater depth later in this series.
With all of the above boxes ticked, you should now have the essential structure in place that
will form the framework of your airline. Your appointed management team will start recruiting
their own team members, and the pieces of your airline will begin to fall into place.
We do hope you’ll join us again for Part 5 of this video series: Aircraft Selection and Sourcing'.
Is there an airline CEO or executive out there in the industry that you would want
to run your new carrier? Let us know who it would be by leaving a comment!