Patrick Mahomes Scores Many Touchdowns with Airshare

Airshare, started 25 years ago as a small fractional aircraft provider out of Wichita, has steadily increased its footprint across the U.S. to become the one-stop aviation services enterprise it is today. Last year, Airshare tripled its fleet and doubled its number of employees after acquiring Wheels Up’s aircraft management division. Today, the company offers everything from charter to aircraft management, including a days-based fractional model with shares in Embraer Phenom 300 and Bombardier Challenger 3500 business jets. It has offices based throughout the U.S., with maintenance facilities in Kansas City, Wichita, Fort Worth, and Buffalo, New York. BJT sat down with Airshare’s CMO Andy Tretiak to discuss the ins and outs of fractional shares, company ambassador and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and more.

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Time is of the utmost importance. From our standpoint, the convenience of flying private is really about saving and maximizing the most of time, to use it for whatever matters most to you.

One of our best customers is the Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid. He's got a vacation home in California and has a very tight schedule during the off-season. When he has two weeks to fly, he wants to be able to get in the plane and be home within four or five hours—versus having to go to a commercial airport, park his car and unload it, go through the terminal and wait, go through security and wait, and then experience flight delays.

Andy Tretiak, chief marketing officer of Airshare.

There are lots of companies that offer only aircraft management or fractional ownership. There's thousands of charter operators. The unique aspect of Airshare is that we do all of them. There is a lot of cross-pollination among our solutions. We have several customers who will own a one-sixteenth fractional share, but also charter through us because they may need a bigger plane or an additional plane. We have several aircraft-managed customers who still buy jet cards from us because if their aircraft's being used for business, they want to have the ability to still fly when they need to. Airshare’s unique value proposition is that we offer all these services under one roof, allowing customers to cross-utilize services seamlessly based on their needs.

We are a days-based model. When you buy a one-sixteenth share ownership of an aircraft, you're entitled to 20 days usage. The plane stays with you for up to 14 hours of flight time per day. The pricing associated with our model is very difficult to beat. When you fly the right way, the same one-sixteenth share that we offer from a competitor is typically 50 hours. So when you fly with us, and you're able to fly, let's say, eight hours in a day of actual flight time, now you're down to 19 days. If you're in a 50 hour program, you're down to 42 hours. So when you run the numbers, you can see, when you fly efficiently with us, you can fly almost double the amount of hours in the same size share as you can with our competitors. We also offer a jet card, which essentially is 10 days—same principles as fractional ownership—but no long-term commitments. You have up to 24 months to use those 10 days.

We ask for a three-day call-out period to guarantee flights, but we do our best to accommodate last-minute requests. The majority of the time, we are able to make it work.

Fractional ownership is ideal for someone who takes around 15 or more trips per year and wants the flexibility to have access to an aircraft without the full financial burden of owning one. It’s particularly beneficial for people who need to make multiple stops in a day or travel frequently for business. For someone who flies less, a jet card is likely a better fit.

When we originally created the day-based model, it was meant for the business customer. If you're visiting multiple locations in a day, trying to take two or three meetings in a day, it's an ideal program for you. When I started about six years ago now, we were probably 70/30 business to leisure. On the leisure side, it's typically clientele with a net worth of $5 million or more. As COVID hit, it  was more challenging to fly the airlines for a variety of reasons. Also, once you get used to flying privately, it's very difficult to go back. The majority of those customers have stuck with us. And so now we're seeing approximately half of our clients [flying for leisure].

We have separate teams for charter services, fractional sales, aircraft management, and operations, but they all work together closely. For example, if a customer’s managed aircraft is down for maintenance, we can offer another aircraft from our fleet or arrange a charter.

Many of our fractional owners eventually transition to full ownership. We help guide them through the process, from selecting the right aircraft to working with brokers. Once they purchase the aircraft, we often manage it for them as part of our aircraft management services. 

Patrick Mahomes has been a customer for seven years and is now a brand ambassador for Airshare. He uses our services extensively during the NFL off-season to balance his busy schedule of business commitments, philanthropy, and family time.

When you’re thinking about flying privately, the most important thing is to consider the size of the aircraft. How many passengers you're taking, how far you're traveling. I think it is also really important that when you're looking at charter opportunities through either a broker or operator to make sure that you get multiple pricing options. The lowest is certainly not always the best and it’s a red flag if you see a charter flight that is dramatically less than the other options.

This interview has been edited and condensed.