JSSI is improving potential customers’ experience through the accurate collection and use of data, Mark Winzar, senior VP, business development and technical services for company told delegates at Corporate Jet Investor’s Asia 2020 online conference on October 14th.

“JSSI now has Conklin & de Decker, Tracware and our parts department providing a suite of services helping potential aircraft owners to evaluate the right type of aircraft, the operating costs involved and the support and maintenance programme they would need,” Winzar said.

Collating digital market data is the best way to paint a holistic picture for customers to guide them as to the true cost of aircraft ownership and operation, said Winzar. He firmly believes that certain amounts of data should be in the public domain to help potential investors make informed financial decisions.

“There is going to be some data that the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] want to keep close to the chest. But I also think having data in the public domain will help people decide things such as where and how they want to get their maintenance done,” he said.

When asked about the risk of backlash following such data requests, Winzar said the company has certainly experienced this. But he asked: “When you are spending millions of dollars for an aircraft, then whose data does it become?”

Ultimately, companies must ask whether they want to keep customers and expand their business. “If we want to keep them [customers] in the dark and push costs up by not evaluating the data, then there is probably enough [data] to go around,” said Winzar.

Hourly cost programmes

Turning to JSSI’s hourly cost programmes, Winzar told attendees that some customers did push the cost of the programme to one side during the pandemic. But maintenance will happen even on an aircraft that is not flying, he added.

“Those who were flying a huge number of hours were happy because of a minimum commitment in the contract, which meant they were paying less than they would per hour”

He said many of the company’s MROs around the world went into shift-based schedules and some have even closed for a while. However, this did not cause problems because flight hours had dropped; meaning maintenance was pushed back.

Winzar is optimistic about the future, reporting that JSSI is now seeing private jet hours slowly rising.