AXIS AVIATION | CJI REPORT
Mission to modernise
After building the ExecuJet brand, Niall Olver looked for a new challenge. He found it in Axis Aviation and his ambition to modernise an “antiquated industry”. Words: Rob Hodgetts
The senior team (pictured L to R) are Kerstin Mumenthaler, accountable manager, Switzerland, Jörg Sabitzer, accountable manager/MD, Niall Olver, CEO and principal, Christian Theuermann, Axis Flight Training Systems and Cedric Gitchenko, director of the Board, Axis Aviation.
AXIS AVIATION | CJI REPORT
The senior team (pictured L to R) are Kerstin Mumenthaler, accountable manager, Switzerland, Jörg Sabitzer, accountable manager/MD, Niall Olver, CEO and principal, Christian Theuermann, Axis Flight Training Systems and Cedric Gitchenko, director of the Board, Axis Aviation.
Mission to modernise
After building the ExecuJet brand, Niall Olver looked for a new challenge. He found it in Axis Aviation and his ambition to modernise an “antiquated industry”. Words: Rob Hodgetts
THERE’S AN OLD joke about the traveller stopping to ask for directions. The wise old local thinks for a moment and then says: “If I was you, I wouldn’t start from here.”
It’s a similar philosophy to Niall Olver, who took ExecuJet to the summit of business aviation and is now trying to guide Axis Aviation to the top via a different route.
Olver and Irish businessman Dermot Desmond, the majority shareholder, sold ExecuJet to Luxaviation in 2015 in what the South African said at the time was “one of the most significant transactions ever” in the industry. But after some time out of jet management the serial entrepreneur is going about things very differently this time around.
“When we had ExecuJet, there was a very large organisation across multiple continents,” he tells CJI. “We had seven AOCs [Air Operator Certificates] and probably around 200 aircraft. But if you look at the manual intervention required to keep all that operating, and the cost of that, I'm thinking to myself, if you start from scratch again, if you do it on a tech base, it could be a very different story.”
The premise of Axis is “not to do aircraft management again for the sake of aircraft management”, but to disrupt the model using technology to help scale the business and improve the efficiency and transparency for the user.
“I look at ExecuJet. It was not one business, it was sales, aircraft management, maintenance, FBOs. And the challenge of scaling the business was the cost base, because to do it properly, especially when you're so international, your fixed cost becomes very high,” he says.
“You'll find that many management companies are running at five, 10, 20 aircraft – that's headed to a glass ceiling in terms of being able to manage all the moving parts. The automation is crucial to make the business scalable. So can we get the technology in place early on, so we don't grow the fixed cost as steeply as we grow the business?”
After the sale of ExecuJet, Olver vowed “not to compete with it” after building the company out from the small business jet maintenance outfit he joined as MD at Johannesburg’s Lanseria Airport in 1993. The company he eventually sold operated in 17 countries with 1,000 employees. When combined with Luxaviation, it became the world’s second largest jet management company after NetJets.
Olver has been true to his word, focusing instead on developing the Zurich-based Axis Flight Simulation, which builds and supplies simulators and flight training systems, and heading up integrated surgical environment business Aspire ISE. But in March 2023 he felt the time was right and climbed back into business jet management with Axis Aviation, also based in Switzerland.
“I remained intrigued about using technology to solve the structural problems of corporate aviation, and enough time had passed without any evident development in the industry, so I got going,” says Olver, CEO, Axis Aviation.
So far Axis has AOCs in Switzerland, Austria and San Marino with plans to open another one in Dubai. The fleet numbers 11 aircraft with “five more to come shortly” and another transaction on the cards could land “quite a number more”. Africa is an “opportunity” with the US the meaningful target, he says.
Axis Aviation’s Gulfstream G650 is ready for departure.
Niall Olver is on a mission to remedy what he sees as the “fragmentation” and “lack of transparency” in business aviation.
Axis Aviation launches in South Africa
Niall Olver, chairman, Axis Aviation has welcomed the company’s South African launch after partnering with Absolute Aviation. The addition of Absolute Aviation’s fleet of 20 aircraft will more than double Axis Aviation’s global fleet and add 35 extra staff.
Having integrated the aircraft management, flight operations and charter business activities of Absolute Aviation, Axis Aviation will now manage two South African entities in Johannesburg and Cape Town, each with its own FBO facility.
“The integration of Absolute Aviation marks a significant milestone for Axis Aviation as we expand our global footprint,” says Olver. “Our decision to embark on this partnership will yield unparalleled benefits for our management and charter customers. This expansion means we are well-positioned to meet the growing demand for premium business aviation services not just in South Africa but across the continent.”
Niall Olver is on a mission to remedy what he sees as the “fragmentation” and “lack of transparency” in business aviation.
Axis Aviation launches in South Africa
Niall Olver, chairman, Axis Aviation has welcomed the company’s South African launch after partnering with Absolute Aviation. The addition of Absolute Aviation’s fleet of 20 aircraft will more than double Axis Aviation’s global fleet and add 35 extra staff.
Having integrated the aircraft management, flight operations and charter business activities of Absolute Aviation, Axis Aviation will now manage two South African entities in Johannesburg and Cape Town, each with its own FBO facility.
“The integration of Absolute Aviation marks a significant milestone for Axis Aviation as we expand our global footprint,” says Olver. “Our decision to embark on this partnership will yield unparalleled benefits for our management and charter customers. This expansion means we are well-positioned to meet the growing demand for premium business aviation services not just in South Africa but across the continent.”
“The US is a far more commoditised and a faster adopter of change and technology. So the strategy would be to prove ourselves in this space, and then possibly go to the US,” said OIver.
The technology he talks about is a proprietary data platform, which will include apps for owners to monitor assets operationally and financially in real time and for crew to have more autonomy and decision-making authority “on the fly”.
With it he hopes to tackle what he sees as the “fragmentation” and “lack of transparency” in business aviation.
“There's a high level of frustration among owners who feel that a management company is a necessary evil and not necessarily a value add,” he says.
“It's very difficult to give a clear, accurate financial picture. You've got so many moving parts happening simultaneously, from fuel to catering to clearances, you name it. I think the industry sort of hides behind that to a large degree because they don't necessarily want to be that transparent with the owners, because very often they're making rebates and the like off the back end.
Although Axis Flight Simulation, which has built and sold 15 full flight simulators, is a separate business, Olver sees “certain synergies”.
“We are going about changing that so we actually do provide owners with real-time data which really is truly transparent and easy to understand. And for that you need automation.”
“The user base is becoming younger all the time. Gone are the days when you're only flying around oligarchs and Saudi princes.”
Olver accepts that there are a number of apps already in play in business aviation, including for fuel, flight planning and accounting. But he says: “To integrate that into one cohesive, usable and immediate tool is the tricky part, which no one's done yet”. He points to the users of Uber, who expect an immediate interface with providers.
Don't forget, the user base is becoming younger all the time,” he says. “Gone are the days when you're only flying around oligarchs and Saudi princes. The customer base is becoming people who have grown up with technology and expect it as a way of operating and communicating. That’s why you find that frustration. Seriously, this is an antiquated industry.
“The intention to make us unique is we develop the business based on the premise of doing an integrated platform so that we can become more efficient on the operating side and more transparent from the owner's point of view.”
The first step is to build a “rich” data set before exploring ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance the offering, says Olver. “When you start to see the pool of data, then the opportunities to provide information in ways you wouldn't have thought about becomes quite exciting.
“We're going to explore all the elements of AI that could make a difference. Such as the whole predictive side of where the aircraft is going to be, and what you can do to pre-sell charter if you know where you're going to be. But AI, in our space, is probably a big term at the moment. To have AI really play a role, you've got to have the data in the first instance.”
The Axis Aviation app is designed to integrate the functions of existing apps into “one cohesive, usable and immediate tool”.
Axis Flight Simulation has built and sold 15 full flight simulators.
One of the company’s Pilatus PC-12 NG aircraft is pictured in her home skies of Switzerland
One of the company’s Pilatus PC-12 NG aircraft is pictured in her home skies of Switzerland
“I do see the obvious application transfer because in Axis Flight Simulation, we're focusing more and more on business jets,” he says. “Now we've formed our own flight test company called Aeroset, so we're able to build our own data models and not be dependent on the OEM models. We do have more opportunity to grow quickly in that space.”
Olver’s passion for aviation was kindled as an officer in the South African Air Force, where he learned to fly, before he took on a role in IT with IBM prior to joining ExecuJet. Armed with a commercial pilot’s licence, he flew two early flights commercially before deciding “that wasn't really my calling” and focused on building the company, which he relocated to Switzerland in 2000.
In the early days of ExecuJet, Olver says the biggest challenge was the ethics of the industry. “I've always done business honestly and the wider industry, to be frank, didn’t necessarily always do that,” he says. Raising capital was another headache.
“People underestimate it,” he says. “If you want to do it properly, you want to grow the business, it's quite capital intensive.”
He adds: “The margins are not particularly high. It's a very romantic space so it is highly competitive. The net margin on most of these businesses compared with the actual risk you're taking [is small] because it's not just a normal business risk, you've also got a lot of physical risk, ultimately a regulatory risk, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Which speaks to the fact that we all do this because we have a passion.”
Olver says “the fundamental drivers behind the industry are still very good in terms of growth potential” – although he doesn’t see it “exploding”. But he suggests corporate aviation needs to address the negative perception on the world’s climate.
“The perception of the bigger populace is that this is a rich man's toy and it's not environmentally friendly,” he says. “The statistics don't support that necessarily, but for the industry that's something that's real and needs to be addressed.”
He adds: “Logically, the industry should play more heavily in favour of the fractional type of ownership where you're getting more use out of the asset. Now that may not speak to our business case, but I think the market has to shift in that direction because ultimately, it's just a more efficient use of the asset.”
For Olver, the real driver is not just being back in the aviation space but building a team and “getting people from diverse cultures to aspire to one core strategy, one core vision”.
“People often ask what is the most exciting thing about the ExecuJet journey? Looking back, what I found the most rewarding was building diverse teams in different cultures. We had people from China to Mexico to Australia to South Africa,” he says.
“What I'm most excited about, the second time around, is can we improve the business model and build a corporate culture that we're proud of that's sustainable in terms of growth.”
