“Private equity has found our industry in a bad way,” said Flexjet chairman Kenn Ricci, speaking yesterday morning in the keynote conversation at the opening session of NBAA’s Schedulers & Dispatchers Conference in Cleveland. “We have a lot of capital trying to find the next thing in our industry, and the result of that has been that innovation is getting stifled to some extent.”
Interviewed by NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen at the standing-room-only event, Ohio-native Ricci did not hold back on his opinion that this cash influx is having a deleterious effect on the business aviation industry. “What’s happening in the maintenance business, they’re rolling up all the mom-and-pop shops,” he explained, adding that as a result of the consolidation, five-year projections suggest maintenance labor costs rising to more than $300 an hour. “So private equity made an investment in this maintenance business with the vision that the investment basis is to get to $300 an hour in maintenance.”
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