Founder Joel Thomas on How Stratos Jets Enhances Charter Flight with AOG Insurance

The Aviation Pros podcast recently hosted Joel Thomas, CEO and founder of Stratos Jets, to discuss AOG events, recovery and coverage.

Thomas highlighted FlightGuard, the AOG coverage solution by Stratos Jets that protects clients from financial and logistical challenges that occur when an aircraft goes tech.

When asked about the average frequency of AOG events, Thomas shared a statistic from Stratos’s mechanical recovery department that showed an incident rate of 8% for AOG occurrences across the aviation industry.

He then noted that the AOG incident rate at Stratos is 3%, which he attributed to booking with high-quality aircraft operators and highly reliable air carriers as well as strong, positive relationships with those carriers.

Who’s impacted most by AOG events?

Thomas discussed the significance of AOG events, stating, “A mechanical's bad for everybody involved…The customer's stressed out because his plans are derailed…Our agent's stressed out because now, things didn't go as planned and he's got to scramble to try and show the customer value.”

He continued, “For the air carrier, it can be devastating for them. They're the ones operating the aircraft. They have this financial concern, like if the aircraft doesn't just get back up online. You don't just control, alt, delete, reboot, they have to get a maintenance tech out there and they have significant investment involved in trying to bring that aircraft online.”

Thomas said, “When a customer books a private jet, they're spending a lot of money, and one of the things that they look for is dependability.”

He continued, “Whether you're flying on demand through us, a jet card, a fractional share, a membership program, all these different models will have different ways to kind of absorb that maintenance issue.”

“Nobody wants to go out there and say, chances are that you might have a mechanical, right? The client wants to buy dependability. And the way we handle that internally is with the AOG insurance,” added Thomas

What is FlightGuard AOG insurance?

Thomas elaborated on how FlightGuard works, sharing, “No matter which agency or agent that books the flight, they have a consistent reliable process in place with a predefined recovery like financial benefit in place so that they can go to the marketplace and immediately make decisions to help bring their clients trip back online and to reduce that downtime as much as possible.”

On exclusions, Thomas noted, “Let's say for some reason an airplane was in scheduled maintenance and it didn't come out in time, it doesn't cover that. But for the unexpected, you know, the aircraft would be covered if it breaks in repositioning or whatnot. We don't do piston charters, so it's turboprop all the way through ultra long-range aircraft. It'll cover any AOG scenario.”

Joel outlined the three options that clients could historically take when an aircraft is deemed unable to fly its planned trip. These were:

• Wait for the airplane to be potentially fixed
• Book a recovery aircraft at market rates
• Cancel the trip

Thomas said, “FlightGuard provides that predefined financial benefit so that they we don't have to go back to the customer and say, hey, we can keep your trip on schedule, we can get you to your, you know, ski trip or whatnot, but we need your credit card. Instead, we can say, we had this issue, here's the recovery option and we've already implemented it for you.”

He also discussed how FlightGuard benefits differ from jet cards, stating, “When safety and profits or customer experience and profits are opposed, when you buy a jet card, you're allowing the issuer of the jet card to make that aircraft and operator selection for you.”

Thomas proceeded, “With our model, that's one of the main advantages is that you get to book the appropriate airplane for your mission at that industry at the market rate…With us providing Flightguard, we're giving customers a lot more control over their customer experience in terms of aircraft and operator selection.”

Another key benefit that Thomas highlighted was the option to buy FlightGuard coverage on a case-by-case basis, a novel offering in the industry.

He elaborated, “They provide on a flight-by-flight basis, so they don't have to shell out, a quarter million dollars to buy a jet card. They're getting the reliability of a jet card. They're getting that great reliability but an enhanced customer experience where they're in full control of aircraft and operator selection.”

Why is transparency key in AOG recovery?

Thomas highlighted transparency as a key aspect of maintaining efficiency and customer trust during AOG events. He said, “The best thing an air carrier can do, from our standpoint, is to just be transparent on the front end. Give us as much time as possible. If our customer's expecting to leave at 9:00 AM, we don't want to find out at 8:45 that the airplane's broken.”

Thomas continued, “We want to know the night before if the crew shut down and they wrote up a log saying, we had XY and Z issue. We'd like to know the night before because that gives us a lot of time to find that recovery and implement it.

He also noted that transparency is important for the charter company as well as the carrier, stating, “On our end, we let our client know: This is what's occurred. The aircraft we originally booked went tech. It's not going to be able to complete the mission. However, we found an option in the marketplace that can go on time or with a slight delay. And hey, it's covered by FlightGuard, so no additional cost. We're just going to move forward with recovery.”

Interested readers can listen to the Aviation Pros podcast episode featuring Joel Thomas now.