Integrating Jet Management and Maintenance at Davinci Jets with Eric Legvold and Trey Darr – EP.261

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(00:00:00) – Intro

(00:03:58) – Starting Davinci Jets

(00:09:09) – Growth constraints

(00:11:44) – Ventures before Davinci

(00:13:46) – The upside to MRO

(00:17:31) – Prioritizing your own fleet vs. external customers

(00:18:28) – Growth plans

(00:20:56) – MRO & Management compliments

(00:22;59) – What do you do differently to maintain profitability?

(00:27:16) – The Charlotte market

(00:29:22) – MRO Growth

(00:31:46) – Process improvements

(00:33:30) – Market growth

(00:40:29) – The slowdown in Jet Cards

(00:43:35) – What are you most excited about in the industry?

Alex Bridgeman: Well, thanks for joining the podcast. How did the name Davinci come through? Where’s that from?

Eric Legvold: Well, we actually started Davinci Jets, it started out as Jetpool back in 2000, I think that was 2004 and then we were operational in 2006. But it started out as Jetpool. The original business plan was formulated at Chapel Hill with my then business partner, Ryan Stone. He was going through MBA at Chapel Hill, and we started a business plan using, we were wanting to use corporate jets for single seat charters, and ended up, we found some regulations that were stifling for that, we’ll just say, over time. But it started out as Jetpool, as in carpool, and so we had that name. And in 2015, we decided to make a change; we would go to all these different places as we were flying around, and I was, at the time, was also a pilot, so I did my fair share of flying back in the day. And when we go somewhere to eat, somebody would inevitably say, oh, Jetpool, do you do Jacuzzis? And so we would- at some point, it became a joke, and we said, oh yeah, yeah, we’re a jacuzzi company. So we decided it would probably be best to change the name, and we actually, unfortunately, we weren’t brilliant enough to come up with it, but we paid someone who was. And they came up the name, with a couple of different names, and we decided on Davinci Jets. Little side note on that, on how we started, it was kind of funny. I went to my lead charter person at the time and said, hey, have you heard of that company Davinci Jets? And she looked at me, she’s like, oh yeah, yeah, I think I have; I think they’re a national brand. I said oh okay, great, great. So a week or two later, when we finally got everything done, I went to her and said, by the way, we’re Davinci Jets. She was a little embarrassed, but it kind of anecdotally came back with our name and proven that it would be a good name.

Alex Bridgeman: And was it management to start or what were the original-?

Eric Legvold: So yeah, so originally, we were going to do the single seat charter. At the time, again, I was flying, doing some flying, and I had a client/friend that I was flying. He called me up, and they’re a fortune 500 company, and he said, our company needs a jet, and we need somebody to manage it. And as any good entrepreneur says, no problem, we can do it. And so we scrambled to find out how we were going to do it and did a 180 degree shift and went into more traditional management than what we were looking at doing. When you’ve got nothing and you’re about to start something, and you run into a regulatory issue or any issue as any entrepreneur may at times, and you have an opportunity, you take it. If a door cracks open, you shove your foot in there and open it.

Alex Bridgeman: And did that lead to introductions from, oh, my friend over here at a similar sized company, they also need a jet, and you just kind of expand from there?

Eric Legvold: Believe it or not, it took us a couple years to get going. That company that I would say called us and said we need an airplane and we’ll get going, they were our first company, still with us today, which we’re coming up on 20 years for that. But back to your question, they are a very under the radar company, and it’s not that they didn’t want us to grow or anything, but they just really didn’t know a whole lot of people, believe it or not. They were actually at the time a fortune 250, and they’re head down and hedgehogging it and kind of we learned the same from them. Those guys were really good. Whenever we flew them around, they would always come up and talk to us in the cockpit, and we would ask them questions about business and different ways of… we learned a lot, I’ll just say, from that group of guys. It was really good on how to learn to run a business.

Alex Bridgeman: And was it bootstrapped, just you and your partner?

Eric Legvold: It was. It was bootstrapped. There was three of us total. And then in 20, I don’t know, somewhere around 2015, I probably have that date wrong, we had a fourth partner that we brought in. It might have been ’14 or ’13, I don’t know. But yeah, there was three of us. We had the two other guys. The original that I had talked about earlier, he was Ryan, he and I were best friends in middle school and high school. He went to the Navy. He was an Academy guy. And when he got out, I was up here in Charlotte flying. And so, he came up here and he was a nuclear guy on a submarine and got a job with a local energy company, we’ll say. And then a year or two later, we started the company. And then before we had gotten that call from that person at that fortune company, we brought a third guy in, which is one of his friends from the academy. So there were three of us total. And he was on the aviation side of the Navy.

Alex Bridgeman: So where does that become a constraint? Because a lot of, we were just talking about other companies that are able to have greater pools of capital they can invest in and grow their business with, but being bootstrapped you have to kind of work with what you have. What does that look like and feel like? What decisions did that create for you?

Eric Legvold: Well, the company at the time, we had one airplane and there were three of us. So, my buddy Ryan, he stayed and worked at the energy company, and on the side, weekends and evenings, we would get together and do whatever the business needed from him. And then myself and the other guy, Paul, the two of us were two of the three pilots for this aircraft. We started out with one airplane. So when you’re wearing three hats, the bootstrapping works. It’s the trick of getting those hats off of you and onto somebody else. And that requires investment. And it means you’ve got to live like nobody else in the beginning to be able to live like nobody else in the end. So, you do what you have to do in the beginning so that you can form a business that is a good, profitable business.

Alex Bridgeman: It’s a good Dave Ramsey quote. It works very well. And you went through a bunch of different ventures within management, so I imagine that’s- is that kind of where your worlds collided eventually?

Trey Darr: Kind of. I think because of my experience there, I think that is kind of what opened up the door for our conversations to kind of take on a more in-depth, I guess, a more in-depth conversation. And yeah, our conversations are definitely still more focused around the MRO and the development of the MRO. But probably, I’m speaking for Eric, but him understanding that I have the perspective of what is needed at a management company and a charter company probably helped eliminate some of the associated risk with somebody in my position that could negatively affect or impact the business.

Alex Bridgeman: You’d seen both sides of the business, could empathize with the other.

Trey Darr: Somebody who’s good at what I do and solely focused on the MRO would maybe treat claims and invoices a little differently than I do and just make sure that number goes as high as it can. And that’s not being a good steward of your company’s clients, even if you’re not a management company. I don’t agree with that approach. There are plenty of MROs that take that approach. That’s not one I’ll take.

Alex Bridgeman: And what were the- can you talk about the ventures you had prior to joining here?

Trey Darr: I had a management company where I managed several Gulfstreams and for brief point in time a little Piaggio. I definitely preferred the Gulfstreams. I was just more familiar with them, honestly. So I did that. I helped build flight departments for different family offices. And I was a one-man show. I didn’t have anybody else working with me. So, overseeing all of their handling, hiring the crew, managing the crew, managing the schedules, and managing the maintenance and all of their programs and things like that. That was just me. And eventually, it got bigger over time, and I was able to hire on a few people who ultimately concluded that aviation was too stressful for them to stay in. And then I ended up partnering with people, and we tried our hand at acquiring and operating a couple charter operators. And it was a challenge. I don’t think the time frame in which we did it was the best. We approached it during like ’22, 2022. And that was right after charter had really reached its peak in that COVID market. And it was on a steady decline. So, a quasi startup during a suffering industry’s time frame, I don’t think that was a good catalyst for growth. And it ultimately resulted in an exit. And then after that, I ended up speaking with Eric. And we’re both looking for the same thing. I wanted to get more involved back in the MRO side of our industry. And he wanted to find a partner who could do that for him.

Alex Bridgeman: So, what attracted you to MRO? Obviously, there’s vertical integration here that has a lot of benefits. But was there something specific that you were looking to achieve with MRO?

Eric Legvold: Yeah, the two things. One is control. And what I mean by that is having our aircraft going out to another company, you’ve got very limited control. Whether you’re their best client or not, you’re still under the stress of whatever they deem is most important. When it’s your own MRO, you have the ability to guide what is important. So, that was one thing; we were seeing control being lost over the years, especially after COVID where things have really tightened up in the MRO space. That was the top thing. The second thing is, if you look at, because of the first thing, having control over it, the second thing is these aircraft, they’re going for these inspections regardless. It’s something it’s either going to go to a competitor, or it’s going to stay in-house. That same revenue is going to be used. In other words, it’s going to be either spent at a different MRO or internally. So, we saw it, and we said, well, we’ve got control over it. And on top of that, we can actually use this as an effort to add to the bottom line. So it’s a benefit to both sides. We can control it, we can give better experience, and we can make some money. Traditionally, in a management company, the maintenance side is kind of a cost center, so to say. So if you can take that and turn it into a profit center, you’re going to be better off and you can feed your own monster. All this work has to be done regardless. So why not do it internally, again, where you can take advantage of that revenue, give a good discount to your clients and have the control over it. And so, we had started down that path. It took us a few years. We had gotten to a point, and we needed somebody to get more sophisticated. And that’s where Trey came along.

Alex Bridgeman: And there’s also a difference between doing MRO for your own fleet and doing MRO for your own fleet plus external, unrelated customers that don’t have anything to do with Davinci. Was that a conscious choice or more of a like we don’t have enough business with just Davinci, we want to have a more professionalized operation?

Eric Legvold: So we’ll have periods where our aircraft need attention, and then there’s periods where we’ve got our guys, and they need something to do, so why not go ahead and use that and supplement the MRO side with outside work. It’s still a priority. What we’re learning now is how do we balance priority on outside customers. We’re doing a great job, Trey’s doing a great job of bringing in new clients that are not a part of the management side, which is great. And we have to make sure we put up that wall of, I’m not going to go after the, we can’t as a management company go after those guys or they’ll never come back. So, we have to put up that wall, and I let Trey handle that side of the house, so to say, so that he can balance both the third party and internal. It’s a learning curve right now how to best balance that.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s kind of a question I have, prioritizing your own fleet versus an external customer. Do customers ask that or is there enough consistency across that there’s not much?

Trey Darr: Nobody’s asked that yet. There is a very large amount of effort that gets put forth in the planning phase. We will over communicate with maintenance control on the management side and make sure that, hey, we’re talking about bringing in these planes in these months or around these weeks. Is that going to put you in a spot where you won’t have a resource for maintenance, and they’ve planned it in advance as well. And normally, it’s a pretty easy conversation. It’s like, these are the blocks we need. So, as I’m filling slots, I just keep their slots in mind and just make sure not to overbook when I have in-fleet planes scheduled in the hangar so that their service is never interrupted.

Alex Bridgeman: And what’s next for growth on the MRO side? Do you have other hangar spaces you need?

Trey Darr: Oh yeah, I mean, that’s always a goal. You always want to grow. Right now, I want to, most immediately, I want to focus on continuing to do what we’re doing well right now and improve on that and really maximize this space. So, I mean, like to a point where all slots, all of our hangar space and our calendar is filled consistently and probably more immediately also be focusing on turning our attention to more of the AOG support. I would say that they’re located in a great spot for, I guess, providing that AOG maintenance service. So we need to look at that. And with us picking up business and getting more clients, I mean, the phone rings much more often. So we definitely need to be thinking ahead on how we can best support them. And I think AOG would be first, but yes, hangar space is a huge constraint in our industry. Everybody knows that. No matter what you’re doing in our industry, hangar space is a pain point. So yeah, if the right opportunity for a hangar came along, we would be silly to pass on it because I would just focus my efforts on filling the calendar in that hangar.

Alex Bridgeman: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s a good location for that East Coast, that Florida to the Northeast traffic corridor.

Eric Legvold: That’s one of the things that we find, if you look years down the road, we think we have an opportunity in Charlotte specifically, as we had talked about earlier before we started this. Charlotte’s a hub for American, and we can get non-stop virtually anywhere in the US. That’s a big plus if you want to drop an aircraft off for a two, three-week long maintenance event, and you want to have somebody come in and do some watching of the aircraft, or for the pilots, it gives them the opportunity to fly non-stop anywhere. So it’s a good opportunity for longer-term maintenance events where you can fly virtually, especially on the East Coast, anywhere on the East Coast, non-stop home. So, we found that that might be a little bit of a plus for us as we’ve gone through and said in three years, where do we want to be?

Alex Bridgeman: And how do you see the MRO and management side complementing each other? Like if I keep walking around your offices for another week, what sorts of things would I see with the two sides interacting and collaborating with each other?

Eric Legvold: Well, what you would see right now is the constant communication one side to the other. I gave you a tour earlier. We have our managed side, and then we have the MRO side, and both guys will flow back and forth. Both teams will flow back and forth. Maintenance control will come over here and check on things. Many times, the maintenance floor is busy, and if they need an update, if an owner’s calling in asking, how’s it looking, they can just come right over here, look at it, go back, and they don’t have to interrupt the business, and vice versa. Our maintenance leads, if they have any questions and they can’t get a hold of someone, they can, within two minutes, they’re on the other side and they can have that immediate discussion of what’s going on. What I would say is you’ll see that flow of back and forth of communication.

Alex Bridgeman: Is there an end state you’re looking to get to or some goal or right plan or set up?

Eric Legvold: No, I wouldn’t say there’s an end state. You’re always looking to grow. If you’re asking if there’s an exit at some point, sure. When is that? I have no idea. But we’ve grown every year since we’ve existed. We’ve been profitable every year since we’ve existed. So the goal is to continue to do so and find more ways that we can expand the company and grow.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it’s a topic we had throughout the tour of there’s lots of ways to burn money on fire in aviation and plenty of examples to point to.

Eric Legvold: You know the old saying, right? It’s how do you get a small fortune in aviation? Start with a big one.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it’s tried and true. What do you feel like you do differently, being profitable every year, what do you feel like you do differently that you don’t see others doing maybe nearly as well or with as much focus on?

Eric Legvold: Well, when we started, I would say we started out to be a business. We were not- we did not have another business that launched us. We did not sell another business that we could go and buy something. We bootstrapped it from the beginning. We were young at the time, and I would say we approached it as a tried and true business. We had a great I say partner in a client that was gracious enough to instill good business skill sets with us and leadership understanding. And I would say that that’s where it was. It was we made this a real business from the beginning. There’s a lot of companies out there in our space that get purchased by somebody or an entity, so to say, that has sold and they love aviation, they come in and they buy an airplane and they buy a charter company, and it’s more of a hobby business. We’re filled with that. I’ve always thought that.

Alex Bridgeman: Or it’s a passion project or a winery or NFL team type.

Eric Legvold: Right, there’s a lot. And I’m not saying everyone, I’m just saying there’s a lot. And I think our focus on always achieving something bigger was our differentiator.

Alex Bridgeman: What did you see? You spent time buying charter businesses. As you looked at all those different companies, what stood out to you?

Trey Darr: I saw a theme of what doesn’t exist here, which is why I was so excited to come in and work with Eric. You have a lot of, our industry is made up of a bunch of us mechanics and pilots who worked really hard and got to a place to be in a position of power or to grow a business or to run a business. And like he was saying, the majority of us in this industry, they do not approach it from a strict business standpoint. They approach it from an aviator standpoint. And as you know, also in our industry, egos are rampant. And I would say an ego is kind of getting in the way of responsible decisions that really help grow a business. And I don’t see that here. I haven’t. I mean, even in the brief discussions I had in the beginning with them, it was really refreshing seeing the way they ran their business. After I came in and I started working with them, I’ve experienced a lot in my career, but it was really refreshing because I found myself back in a position where I’m learning a lot and that feels great. It’s very fulfilling. So maybe I had a little bit of that ego too when I got here because I thought I knew everything. But I’m learning more about business here than I have in any of my past experiences. So, I’m really enjoying that.

Eric Legvold: Well, I was going to say, for us, we learned early on hiring smart, hiring good people that are smart is, I always say, you’ve got to be- if I’m going to hire you, you’re smarter than me. That’s where I always want to be. And I tell all of our people, when you’re hiring, hire someone smarter than you. You need to make sure that somebody is- you get hit by the old dump truck, we need to have somebody who can take your position, and they need to be smarter than you. We’ve grown up with that mindset of making sure we get good people, smart people, that want to learn and want to make a difference.

Alex Bridgeman: How big is the team today?

Eric Legvold: I think we’re at 92-ish.

Alex Bridgeman: How much of that is the MRO side or is it still mostly the management side?

Eric Legvold: Mostly management. Mostly management side. The MRO is at-

Trey Darr: I was going to say 15, yeah, 16.

Alex Bridgeman: Growing quickly though from what it sounds like.

Eric Legvold: Yes, last year we had like five or six mechanics. I think today we sit at 13 or we’re about to be at 13, and I suspect by the end of the year we’ll have more than that.

Alex Bridgeman: Has the Charlotte market been pretty good to hire in with American and all the maintenance there or not so much?

Trey Darr: No because they are very different types of business. Corporate aircraft MRO versus a commercial aircraft maintenance facility are very different animals. From the types of airframes they work on to the way they do their jobs, very different. So not a huge resource there. Coming from South Florida, recruiting was easier than here, I would say that, because, I mean, you’ve got 30 shops all within a commutable distance. There’s no lack of options, I would say. Same with like Dallas or Teterboro. But you have your issues when it comes- like in those areas, like you might have a lot of shops or a lot of mechanics, but you also now have a saturated market. Or in South Florida’s case, in Teterboro’s case, you have a very seasonal market. So you have to staff in order to be able to capitalize on your busy months, and then it’s a desert half the year. And it makes for very large swings on your P&L as you’re going through the year, which is not very comfortable. Whereas it’s not as seasonal in Dallas, but they have so many options that, as far as MROs go, that the labor rate that’s being sold is pretty low because of all the competition, but it’s very competitive on the hiring side, so the pay rates are up, so your margins will suffer. It’s funny because every city you go to, every area in our country has a different market. I like this one. This one stands alone. So yeah, there’s a challenge with recruiting, but those other challenges that can be a little more harmful to a business than recruiting, I’ll forgo those, and I’ll trade that for a recruiting challenge.

Alex Bridgeman: So growing in Biz Dev MRO business, what’s that been like? Last year’s been a lot of growth for you. What’s the path look like?

Trey Darr: You’re saying like previously, like what we’ve done so far?

Alex Bridgeman: Both. Yeah.

Trey Darr: Like Eric was saying, it was a smaller team when I got here. And obviously, one fix is to to change that because there was plenty of work and plenty of work that, ultimately, responsibly had to be turned away because you wouldn’t be able to properly do that task or get it out in a reasonable amount of time. So, it was easy to bring on more people with the understanding that the work was already here, and we did that. And then in order to optimize, I guess, our operating hours, we split, rather than being one day shift, we split them into two sets of four tens. So, we had longer operating hours each day, and we even added a day to the calendar for the week. So, we increased operating hours by 50% just by doing that shift split. That helped quite a bit. As far as availability, mostly that was honestly mostly done for availability to the fleet because doing it and having such early hours in a short day, if you had an issue after three o’clock, there was no shop to help. Well, now that’s not the case. So that was one important change. And then really just training the guys, going through the basics of work order structures and things like that. And they already had good understanding of that. I just had the fortune of experiencing a few ways that worked a little better. So we came together as a team and adopted what worked or what improved our current situation and we moved forward from there. Now going forward, we’re still, we’re not so focused on the big macro problems like operating hours or a number of people or things like that. Now we’re able to get down into the intricacies of how can we be more efficient on a certain type of task or in planning or in quoting or something like that. So that part’s fun. It’s more challenging with the more details that you’re trying to change, but it’s fun.

Alex Bridgeman: What’s an example of some detail or process you’re working on or looking at?

Trey Darr: I think right now we’re trying to take a deeper dive into our quotes. Quoting is pretty standard across our industry, but I think as an attempt to give a better service preemptively to our guests or our clients, we’re trying to dive deeper into the possibilities of replacements or services or obsolescence. So there’s more research on our end on the quoting side. And it’s kind of just giving them, in a conversation like this, being able to give them best and worst case scenarios, some of the things we’re seeing and stuff like that. And that way we can try to help eliminate surprises should they arise. Because that’s no fun being an aircraft owner and finding out some big thing with a little research could have been avoided. So that’s why we’re doing that. It’s not just a customer service focus, but also an efficiency focus here because the reality is that one of those events that drags out an RTS date now affects my slots, my maintenance slots, and my real estate going forward. So trying to stay ahead of it for the owner and for us.

Alex Bridgeman: Growth picture overall, there was that huge Flexjet order a couple days ago for like $8 billion worth of [inaudible] or something, maybe it’s a different number, but there was a huge order, and the share from charter to fractional over time has shifted from like 45% to closer to 55 now. But as we talked about, there were like some different- there’s a lot of key differences between fractional versus full ownership of the plane that are important and still make them very distinct product lines. What does the growth look like on management? What does the market in the future to you look like or feel like?

Eric Legvold: For us, we do not play in the fractional side. We do have some charter. I’ve always, and we are a management company with a charter certificate and not a charter company that manages. So, I would say for us, I’ve been in the business for a few decades now, what I’ve seen is the management side is continuing to get more and more accepted. When I started back in the 90s, management was a little less acceptable, for lack of a better term. And over time, I have seen the market shift where larger corporations, mid-sized corporations are now accepting management. And us as management companies have gotten a lot more sophisticated and better at what we do. So, I would say, for us, I would say continuing doing what we’re doing well which is managing an aircraft. We provide a good fortune 1000 feel. If you want the feel of a fortune 1000 flight department, that’s who we are. If you want to have some offset to your aircraft, you want your airplane, you don’t want to have a fractional, that’s who we are. We can offer some of that offset through charter. I’m not the guy who’s going to put a thousand hours of charter on your aircraft and run it into the ground. We’re the company that is going to take care of your asset, make sure it’s there and it looks right and it flies right and we have good pilots flying you and your family or you and your company. And that’s what we do. We do it professionally from the first call to the last, to the invoice. That’s what we do. We pride ourselves on having the best experience. You can have great customer service and still screw things up, but we strive for that best experience in aviation. And we’ve done that ever- from the beginning, that’s who we’ve been. And we started out as a pure 91 management company and, a few years into it, got our charter certificate. Charter’s great. I love it. As a company, it does add value. As a business, it adds value. But it’s not our mainstay. Our mainstay is managing the asset, and we’d love to be able to charter it if that’s what you desire, you the client.

Alex Bridgeman: And do you see more Fortune 500 flight departments moving towards a third-party management company?

Eric Legvold: I think that is becoming more and more acceptable. And like I said, I attribute that to management companies from the past becoming more sophisticated, more customer-centric and running it like a business instead of a mom-and-pop shop, which is what you see a lot of in this industry. So yes, I think that is becoming more and more acceptable, and therefore, I believe for us we have a pretty good runway in front of us.

Alex Bridgeman: And so for the company to say we have a flight department, maybe we should consider using a third party instead, or maybe they don’t have anything and are just deciding which path to choose, in my mind, it seems like the focus for a company not having to spend much mental share on managing planes and just using them is probably the biggest benefit over just cost and everything else.

Eric Legvold: We’ve seen two benefits over the years, which one you just pointed out, which is getting rid of that headache. If management is done properly, it’s not a headache. You may have questions here and there that get answered, but for the most part, the director of aviation or whomever it is is not bothering the CEO constantly, is not asking for more budget for this or more budget for that, and that leads me into the second piece which is the bloat. If you get a corporate flight department, many times you’ll see what I like to call the bloat. They continue to increase the budget size, increase the pilots, increase, oh now we need a hanger, now we need a 15 million dollar hanger to be put under this company that makes diapers or does whatever they do, they aren’t in aviation and now they’ve got these huge complexes with 20 people to operate three airplanes, or 30 people to operate three airplanes. It’s just the bloat. As a management company, you keep that under control.

Trey Darr: That’s what I would say as well. I mean, obviously they’re great businessmen, great at what they do and very intelligent to get to a point where they have a flight department, but I’m sure there’s… they wouldn’t just go out on a limb and jump into a complex industry that they have no working knowledge of. I don’t think aviation is one that you would want to do that. I mean, with compliance and everything else, you’re going to want somebody managing it for you that knows the industry inside and out, understands compliance and keeps you out of trouble. And also just, I mean, the headache and the amount of brain damage that goes into managing a flight department. And then to Eric’s point, that financial bloat, I mean, you’re not operating very lean if you’re also operating with a learning curve.

Alex Bridgeman: Have you seen Succession, the HBO TV show?

Eric Legvold: I have not. Yeah, it’s embarrassing because everybody tells me to watch it, but I have still not watched it.

Trey Darr: I haven’t seen it.

Alex Bridgeman: There’s a hilarious scene in like one of the last episodes of this investor trying to buy the company is interviewing the future CEO, just trying to gauge if he’s going to be interested or a fit for the role, and he says, I just need you as the CEO. I’m the owner, but I need you to be the pain sponge for all of my problems and headaches. And it sounds like that’s the pain sponge model here.

Eric Legvold: That’s right. That’s exactly right. But it’s not as painful for us because we know what we’re doing. And we’ve been doing it forever. We know how to handle pilots that get a little crabby or we know how to handle maintenance, techs, or whatever it is, scheduling. We know how to handle scheduling and international operations so that they don’t have to be bothered constantly with this, that or the other.

Alex Bridgeman: Are there models within aircraft ownership like charter, fractional or management that maybe are being de-emphasized over time? Like if things are shifting towards one thing, are they shifting away from something else?

Trey Darr: The jet cards are losing steam, and rightfully so, in my opinion. I’m not knocking the people that do it. I’m sure there’s some people that do it well. But from the outside looking in, I don’t really understand how it can be a good approach for the end user. But I think the whole industry is kind of starting to see that. That’s why you’re starting to see them kind of dwindle. So as far as change goes from either management or flight solution type things, I definitely see that going away.

Eric Legvold: Yeah, I would agree. I think jet cards have run their course. We’ve had several that have come and gone. And it seems right now that fractional is where all the folks that want to go in between charter and straight traditional charter and ownership, that don’t want to get into ownership, which there’s good reasons for that. I’m not by any stretch saying that fractional is a bad thing. I think it’s a niche that works, and it’s a big niche for that matter. And I don’t think that ownership will ever go away, ever. So people like having their own beach house. People like having their own aircraft. So that won’t go away either. And that’s that’s why I personally like that business and always have.

Trey Darr: The future of fractional is, because like you said, I think it’s kind of like the in-between for the people who are candidates for owning and operating their own aircraft or strictly sticking to charter, it’s like their test phase or dipping their toe in the water. But I think as time goes on, you may even see that that subsides to more of like a, I don’t know, like a part 91 approach where you just have several owners of an aircraft, not so much a model where you’re bringing in outside parties to share an aircraft. I also see one of the biggest hurdles in that fractional approach being you’ve got three guys or three people having a fraction or four having a fraction on an aircraft, and three of the four are going to be flying commercial for Thanksgiving and Christmas, then that might start to rub you the wrong way when you’re paying that big of a bill to have that plane available.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it becomes very tough and challenging to work through.

Eric Legvold: If you have a strictly business purpose and your business’s schedules don’t conflict, that could work. But I think for the amount of people attempting it and the amount of people it actually works for I don’t think the conversion rate is great.

Alex Bridgeman: What are you most excited to see happen the next year?

Eric Legvold: I’m hoping deregulation. To an extent, I would like to see some streamlining of training processes that make sense. I’m trying not to be political. I really don’t want to be. I think there can be a lot of gain that can be made in modernizing some of our regulation and getting that right sized. We are a heavily, heavily regulated industry. There’s not many that are more regulated than us. So, I would really love to see that happen. I would like to see the FAA go after one of the issues in our industry, and you may or may not be aware of it, and I’m a big advocate of finding a way to stifle the illegal charters. It’s been something that has, I mean, on a monthly basis, it affects us. I got salespeople that sell charter, and then all of a sudden, the charter will cancel because they have a, oh, my lease aircraft just came available, so we’re losing business to that. And those folks don’t have anywhere near the oversight that we have on a daily, monthly basis. So it’d be nice to see that. I hope we do have some other regulation easing. I think that would be good for the industry.

Alex Bridgeman: Anything Davinci specific that you’re excited to build out this year or see happen or big hires to make?

Eric Legvold: So we’ve been going through a change within our ranks to develop a position that we’re calling an asset manager. Other companies have different names for it, but basically it’s a person that oversees the day-to-day management of a few tail numbers. Yes, so we’re bringing somebody in for that purpose and to manage some of our other departments, smaller departments that answer to me, to try to get those consolidated under one person to free up some of my time. So yeah, we’re bringing in, and that piece that we’ve been working through over the last couple of years, developing and writing out the SOPs, writing out the description of the job, and myself and a few others have been doing these jobs. And so now we’re going to shift that into an actual person that may- or multiple people, I should say, but their job is to have that asset management.

Alex Bridgeman: Is there anything you’re excited about?

Trey Darr: Excited might be the word, it might not be the word, but I finally I have, my team of directors here at the MRO are doing a phenomenal job, and I’m to a point now where I can kind of shift my focus more to business development and sales. And so that’s where- that’s why I said excitement is, it’s like a loaded thing. I’m kind of excited, kind of nervous because sales is- a specific sales job is not one that I’ve held. I’d like to think that I have good relationships in the industry and I’m personable, but really honing in on focusing on sales, yeah, exciting and a little nerve-wracking all at the same time. But because I’m thankful to be in that position because I do have a good team of directors that can keep this thing going while I go out and focus on that.

Alex Bridgeman: Well, it will be fun to watch, and thanks for doing a podcast and thanks for the tour too. I love getting to see all the planes and see what you’re working on. So thanks for sharing your time.

Eric Legvold: Appreciate your time as well.

Trey Darr: Yeah. Thank you.