Making its first ABACE appearance as an exhibitor this year is U.S.-based FBO chain Million Air (Booth P718), which last fall announced a partnership with CJet to rebrand its FBO at Bejing Capital International Airport as Million Air. The facility became officially known as Million Air Beijing on January 1 and represents the chain’s first location in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Here at ABACE, Million Air CEO Roger Woolsey described the agreement from a marketing perspective. “Our role is a partnership with them where we are giving the management, the oversight, the design, but we’re physically there every day,” Woolsey told AIN. “The goal is to get the Beijing operation operating to the 21st century standard, where coffee, ice, towing airplanes and other FBO services and amenities are as you see it in the rest of the world.”
In the four months since the start of the agreement, Million Air has focused on managing the staff and service attitudes to align with the FBO chain’s standards. The two companies have also embarked on a $2 million renovation of the facility, which is so far less than 10 percent completed and will continue through the end of this year.
Among the changes, the FBO will receive Western-style multimedia-equipped conference rooms and a theater room for pilots and crew. “We want to bring all those Western features to the FBO that have quite frankly been missing,” said Woolsey. “At the same time we don’t want to take away all the best of the Bejing culture. CJet has put some really interesting features into their design, so we just bring the best of the best and meld the two together. I want you to arrive and come out of your aircraft and say, ‘Wow, I’m in Bejing.’”
The facility sees around 50 operations per day, approximately 70 percent of which is domestic traffic, according to the company. Large-cabin, long-range business jets such as Gulfstream G550 and G650s and Bombardier Globals dominate, along with a few bizliners such as the BBJ and ACJ.
“Our aircraft movements on the ramp are not yet up to Western standards,” noted Woolsey. “In China, Beijing specifically, if you are flying in, you get assigned a parking space before you ever even arrive, and its possible that you could have the CEO on the aircraft and actually have to park almost half a mile from the facility because that was the parking assignment you were given.
“Our design is to make this like Western FBOs where you land, you pull up at the front door of the FBO, you disembark your passengers, the pilots come into the facility, we hook a towbar to you and valet park your jet,” said Woolsey, adding when it’s time to depart, the aircraft would be brought back to the front door again. Yet, as he noted, that is still a work in progress, as having open ramps is a new concept in China.
Despite all those changes, the company never loses sight of its purpose. “We’re going to take care of you and your aircraft, so your corporation can focus on their mission because at the end of the day those aircraft are not coming to visit Million Air,” said Woolsey. “There’s a real corporate mission at stake, and we want to be that seamless part of their flight department to make that go well.”
The company acknowledges the business model at Beijing is an experiment but, once refined, Million Air plans to expand it into other Asian markets.