FOUR CORNERS PROFILE
Four Corners: ‘Benefits of owning a jet, without owning a jet’
As demand for private jet travel remains strong, Mente’s sister company Four Corners Aviation claims to have spotted a new niche: offering all the benefits of jet ownership with ‘none of the hassle’. Words: Megan Kelly
FOUR CORNERS PROFILE
Four Corners: ‘Benefits of owning a jet, without owning a jet’
As demand for private jet travel remains strong, Mente’s sister company Four Corners Aviation claims to have spotted a new niche: offering all the benefits of jet ownership with ‘none of the hassle’. Words: Megan Kelly
“SOME OF THE best ideas are the simplest ideas,” Vincent Kavanagh, executive vice president and head of Sales at Four Corners Aviation tells Corporate Jet Investor. “When I talk to some clients about Four Corners, their eyes open and their jaws drop, like ‘why didn’t anybody else do this before?’”
“It’s a time machine that allows them to do more with less time. The stigma around the lifestyles of the rich and famous and jets is only the edges of the industry”
Brian Proctor, CEO, founder and president of Mente
If that sounds over-exaggerated, Irish-born, Florida-residing Kavanagh claims his face had a similar eye-popping response when hearing about the Four Corners business plan. Kavanagh was working for charter company Air Partner at the time, but after meeting Brian Proctor, founder and CEO, Mente and learning about the business, Kavanagh jumped onboard. “When I first met Brian and understood Four Corners Aviation and its Freedom programme, that was my reaction,” he said. “I’ve worked in the industry for 18 years, but that was a game-changer for me.”
Proctor launched sister company Four Corners at our CJI Miami 2021 conference in partnership with Aquila Aviation Ventures. Having been at Four Corners for just a few months, Kavanagh has already made quite the impression on Proctor, who says: “He’s a rock star. It feels like he’s been here for three years already.”
Born from the mind of Proctor, Freedom offers corporate jets as a service rather than a product. Instead of buying an aircraft, customers receive full access to one. Clients are involved from the beginning; they pick the aircraft, customise it how they wish and choose their designated flight crew. The only difference is that they don’t own the aircraft – Four Corners does.
The company markets the service as having all the benefits of owning a jet and “none of the hassle”. Rather than a business owning an aircraft as an asset, Four Corners removes it from the capital expense accounts and replaces it with a set monthly access fee. Pitched at individuals and companies who use corporate aircraft for more than 200 hours annually, the service allows customers to have guaranteed access to the aircraft for five years with prices based on the level of delivery they choose.
“The beauty in it is the freedom of being able to walk away after five years,” says Kavanagh. “If you say, ‘Vincent, we’re no longer flying, or we’re flying less hours’ you don’t have to worry about what to do with the aircraft and the crew.”
And the programme is entirely customisable for the customer, right down to interiors and paint jobs designed by them.
Proctor’s Mente was born in July 2009 off the back of the global economic crash. “We literally put $100 in Chase Bank and put all the initial software and servers on our credit cards,” Proctor tells CJI. The company closed its first deal on July 27th 2009 and has grown ever since, having hit the milestone of over 350 transactions for about $5bn in total. “That first deal felt like we won the lottery,” he says. “Maybe we were just stupid, but I was fairly confident that we were going to be successful.”
Mente and Four Corners have a shared services platform but otherwise Four Corners is a completely different business according to Proctor.
As well as its Freedom solution, Four Corners offers (as its name suggests) three other services; traditional charter brokerage, aircraft management and its Insight programme which offers jet card solutions and oversight on fractional assets and options.
Proctor says they are “aggressively pursuing growth opportunities”, looking at middle market companies for either acquisition or merger opportunities to add to the platform, specifically operators, FBOs, MROs and data companies.
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Vincent Kavanagh (pictured) tells the Four Corners story “better than anyone”, says Brian Proctor.
Buying a private jet always comes with financial risk, due to depreciation and costly maintenance. Four Corners says their Freedom solution removes this risk. “Lots of big entities have a fleet of aircraft on their balance sheet that they just don’t want on there,” Kavanagh says. “With the Freedom programme, we can go to any of these big entities and buy the aircraft from them, run it ourselves, keep the crew and the flight departments they have in place and just employ them in-house with Four Corners.” Four Corners can also provide their own management and crew through Mente Group.
Proctor says the model allows customers to have access to a jet without owning or leasing it, so it “minimises Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] and Internal Revenue Service [IRS] reportability and it gives owners everything they want”.
Another benefit the programme offers is the fixed monthly rate. “There’s more transparency to the Freedom programme over a five-year period than there is in a jet card solution, because the jet card is affected by market costs and inflation,” he says.
Kavanagh says clients will know about all costs up front, with an agreed price depending on the jet, crew and amount of notice required before a flight. Service offerings are tiered with Platinum level tailored to senior individual level, Gold tier for executive transport, Silver tier for fractional solutions and shared use with colleagues, and Bronze tier for ad-hoc transport and shared use.
A service fee will be charged each month, while a set occupied fee will be charged per flight. There will also be costs involved for any interior design changes or configuration layout changes, but the client will also know about these from the outset.
“There’s a real attraction to Four Corners from clients who are used to having a guarantee of a fixed rate, but not knowing the aircraft they’re going to walk on to each time they fly,” says Kavanagh.
Despite feeling confident enough to launch Mente Group amid a global recession back in 2009, it is the next decade or so of changes in the industry that Proctor is wary about. Climate change and labour shortages are some of the worries that he is trying to plan for now.
Challenging and changing perspectives of the sector will help mitigate any negative impacts of a sharper focus on climate change. “I would say 99% of our clients use aeroplanes to run their businesses more efficiently,” he says. “For those clients, it’s a time machine that allows them to do more with less time. I think the stigma around the lifestyles of the rich and famous and jets is really only the edges of the industry, it’s not what the core of the industry is about.”
Proctor thinks that the business aviation market needs to press the fact that private jets are a business tool and that technology will be integral to reducing carbon emissions. He adds: “It’s the next 10 or 15 years that are going to be really hard to navigate through because there’s a whole generation right now that’s retiring who were the foundation of the industry.”
The Freedom programme is designed to enable clients to lift off the runway while lifting the costs of jet ownership off their balance sheet.
He says the industry is strained by lack of infrastructure and talent to meet demand but that it’s not all doom and gloom, provided there is investment. And with high demand, that’s hopeful. “We’ve seen more demand than ever on the system. I don’t believe the infrastructure is built to sustain the level of growth that we’ve had. I wouldn’t say the industry is at breaking point, but it’s stretched pretty thin,” he says. “We need to see a significant investment in infrastructure and getting people into the industry is going to be critical.”
The effect of the market on the new business remains to be seen, but with his experience in dealing with market downturns, Proctor reckons he’s ready for anything. “After 12 months of really working hard on the business we’re ready for any type of client, anywhere in the world,” he says. “It took a lot more energy to get where we needed than I thought it would, but we’re there now.”
Hinting at further expansion, Proctor adds: “We are actively pursuing a closing for another company that’ll probably be announced in a couple of weeks.” In the first days of October, Four Corners revealed this deal as the acquisition of UltraAir, the Omaha Nebraska aircraft management company.
Wherever the young business goes next, Proctor knows its marketing is in good hands with Kavanagh. “He tells the story of Four Corners better than anybody I’ve ever heard,” he laughs.
Four Corner’s Freedom programme offers clients the same jet and crew for every flight.
“We’ve seen more demand than ever on the system”
Brian Proctor, CEO, founder and president of Mente
Four Corners Timeline
2022:
Four Corners acquires UltraAir, the Omaha Nebraska aircraft management company.
2021:
- Private equity firm City+Ventures invests in Mente Group in April
- Aquila Aviation Ventures is formed
- This is thought to be the first time a private equity firm has invested in a brokerage
- Brian Proctor becomes CEO of Aquila
- Four Corners is launched.
2019:
- Mente celebrates its 10th anniversary with $10.5bn in transactions and 500 business jet deliveries.
2017:
- Mente partners with Richard Roseman Airborne Designs to form new completions management service.
2014:
- Mente celebrates its fifth birthday with $1.5bn in transactions
- Mente Complete, the group’s advisory service, is launched.
2009:
- Mente Group is founded by Brian Proctor on July 1st
- Mente closes its first deal for $85,000 on July 27th.
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