Cost Accounting for Business Aviation

Tony Kioussis (00:00):

Welcome to another Asset Insight podcast covering the aircraft ownership lifecycle. I am Tony Kioussis, President of Asset Insight and your host. Following a distinguished career with the U.S. Air Force, David Wyndham joined the firm of Conklin and de Decker, where he helped the consulting company become an industry authority on business and general aviation aircraft operating costs. David eventually became a partner in the firm and following its acquisition by JSSI, David joined Par Avion, thereby entering the aircraft acquisition and sales arena. Let’s start off by identifying the different types of operating costs. What are they and how should an operator view them?

David Wyndham (01:13):

This is going to be a very general overview. And so if any of you out there have MBAs or accounting backgrounds, plug your ears. Essentially, we look at operating costs as they relate to aircraft in two general areas. One is called variable operating costs. And as the name suggests, they vary, in this case, by the utilization. So with an aircraft, it would vary by the flight hour, or it could even vary by the cycle, the takeoff and landing, things like that. Those are variable costs.

David Wyndham (01:42):

Then with respect to the aircraft, we look at fixed operating costs. Those don’t change per the utilization. Those are essentially fixed through a set period of time, like as a calendar year or monthly expense, things like that. Where those get confused a little bit is one of those is nomenclature for years, and Conklin and de Decker, we were as bad at this as anybody. Somebody calls up and says, “Hey, David, I need the DOCs on a fill in the blank airplane.” DOC stands for direct operating costs.

David Wyndham (02:15):

Well, direct operating cost really means variable plus fixed because they’re all directly associated with operating the airplane. But what they really meant, and what we supported for a number of years until we changed the labeling on our pages, was they wanted the variable costs, the fuel, the maintenance, things like that. So that’s one area where things can get confused.

David Wyndham (02:34):

Then the other area is relative to the size of the aviation operation. If you’re a single aircraft flight department, your direct, your variable, your fixed, those all can fall under that same umbrella. If you’ve got say two, three, four, 40 aircraft, then the operating costs directly associated with operating a fleet of, say, Bombardier that [NetJets 00:02:59] has their Flexjet is going to be different than the cost for a single aircraft in the fleet.

David Wyndham (03:04):

So for the purposes of our discussion today, everything’s going to assume as a per aircraft type of expense. Not since really 2008 have we seen a huge change in how many hours people are operating the aircraft. What happens there is that just throws any kind of budgeting you had out the window.

Tony Kioussis (03:27):

Okay, so to your point, let’s delve into these individually. What would fall under the classification of variable costs?

David Wyndham (03:34):

Variable cost, or again, those costs that vary with how much you fly, the obvious ones that come to mind are fuel costs. You fly an hour, you burn so many gallons of jet fuel at so many dollars per gallon. Maintenance, maintenance includes aircraft parts, simple thing like brakes and tires. You take off, you land, you stand on the brakes, you burn a little bit of rubber, you use some of the brakes. Could also include labor, such as labor to do routine inspections, things like that.

David Wyndham (04:02):

Another part that falls under the maintenance are the guaranteed hourly maintenance program. Tony, you’ve written quite eloquently about these off and on in the past. I’ve tried to throw a couple of articles into the ring there. But in essence, the guaranteed hourly maintenance program is you pay a third party, could either be the manufacturer of that component, such as the engine or the airframe, or the auxiliary power unit, or a third party provider, so much per usually operating hour. And that money goes into an escrow account and accrues toward the maintenance for the airplane.

David Wyndham (04:36):

The rates are guaranteed. Typically, they’re paid as an hourly, although we’ll get into that on the fixed cost a little bit. They can get different depending on the airplane. It’s not an insurance program, but it’s an assurance program. They are assuring you that your costs will not exceed this amount, whatever the contract amount is. Those are the big ones, fuel and maintenance costs.

David Wyndham (04:56):

Other things that will vary with how much you fly are navigation fees, whether you’re flying across Canada, flying in Europe, landing and parking fees. Landing and dropping somebody off at a, say, LaGuardia to catch a flight or JFK is going to cost you a lot more than if you’re landing in a small rural airport out in the country someplace.

David Wyndham (05:16):

Catering can be a huge expense there, or not, depending upon how many people, what they’re eating, are we taking a global business jet on a 14 hour trip, and we need dinner and breakfast. Or are we just water and snacks on a quick out and back? Also, part of the variable cost can be travel expenses as expensed toward the trip itself. So if you leave home, you go someplace, you spend the night in a hotel, you have maybe a rental car, meals, those expenses would be considered a variable expense.

The last one, it’s always there, but it’s much, much more prevalent now is cabin cleaning. You always have a clean airplane when you fly private aircraft, not a question there. But now those expenses can be increased significantly if you’re looking at disinfecting and sanitizing beyond just the normal cleaning. So again, that’s something when you fly, the end of the flight, or prior to the next flight. So those are the big ones. Again, the major cost drivers in this tend to be the fuel and the maintenance expenses.

Tony Kioussis (06:15):

Yeah, I can imagine there’s plenty of small ones, but that definitely covers the major items. What about fixed costs? What would cover those expense items?

David Wyndham (06:24):

I’m going to start with the wildcard fixed cost and that’s maintenance again. Maintenance is a cyclical item. Some things happen every 300 hours, every 600 hours, every 2,400 hours, for example. But there are a lot of maintenance items that are calendar driven, every six months, 12 months, 48 months, 96 months. And so those calendar driven items, whether you fly the airplane or park the airplane, you are accruing those as the calendar pages click over.

David Wyndham (06:53):

So some forms of maintenance are actually a fixed expense. Even in some of the guaranteed hourly maintenance programs if you were in, say, an all in airframe program, tip to tail as JSSI calls it, and you’re accruing for all of those maintenance inspections, again a 48 month inspection, there will be a so many dollars per month fee associated with that. So your guaranteed hourly maintenance program can actually have a fixed, as well as the variable expense to that.

David Wyndham (07:21):

Other things that are in there would be obviously salaries, personnel. You have a couple of pilots, maybe a maintenance technician, a dispatcher, an admin person, all of those salaries are essentially fixed. Granted, if you find enough flight hours, you’ll probably need additional site crew, but then again, that next pilot is going to be there for X number of flight hours. So there’s a little variability in there.

Again, your maintenance crew, cabin crew schedules, et cetera, contract crew can be a fixed or it can be a variable in that, say, you’re a small flight department, you have two pilots, and one of the pilots is on vacation, or is going to be going away to training, and you need to fly a trip. And so you contact a service and says, “I need a qualified pilot to fly right seat for the next two weeks,” X dollars go out the door to that. So that contract crew member could be considered either a fixed or variable expense.

David Wyndham (08:17):

Hangar, of course, is a fixed expense. Insurance is a fixed expense. Your annual training budget for your pilots, your cabin crew, your maintenance personnel, and retraining every year or every six months, however you do that, that would be a fixed expense. Taxes are a fixed expense. Aircraft management fees generally are a fixed expense. If you have your aircraft professionally managed by a management company, that company is generally going to charge you a monthly fee for their services, depending on how the contract structured. It could be an all inclusive service, or it could be itemized out into various items.

A couple other things in there are your maintenance tracking system, computerized maintenance systems. Those things are very handy, and typically go on an annual basis. Publications, it’s getting really hard now to call up the OEM and say to them, “Give me the handbook on performance for my airplane.” They’re going to laugh and say, “We don’t put anything on paper anymore.” But for X amount of dollars per month, per year, you can subscribe to the service and here are maybe DVDs. It may be on the web. It may be a special application for your mobile device and pad and things like that.

David Wyndham (09:28):

The last one is subject for another podcast to go into detail, but that would be depreciation. In general, there’s two types of depreciation that would be considered, if you will, as an expense. One is tax depreciation. I’ll let the CPAs and so forth discuss that with you. But essentially, the aircraft is being used for business, then a portion or significant portion of the expenses can be used as a expense. Depreciation of the aircraft, the value of the aircraft can be depreciated as well with the taxes on the airplane, reducing your tax implication.

Then the other depreciation, it’s an expense, but it’s one that builds up over time that you don’t write a check for it until you sell the airplane, so to speak. That’s market depreciation. You can lose a couple percent per year. You can lose in the last few months a couple of percent per week on the value of the airplane. Again, the change in value of the airplane is going to be there only when you realize the sale of the aircraft. You can ask an appraiser to come in. You can talk to an aircraft broker and say, “What’s my aircraft worth today?” You’ll get numbers. But until the aircraft is sold, that’s a number that you really can’t write a check for it until the aircraft is sold.

Again, there may be some other more minor expenses on the fixed side. The major ones tend to be crew salaries are significant, hanger, insurance, training, those are the general big ones. Management fees, depending upon the structure of the agreements and things like that. One other one that could be either a variable or a fixed expense is airborne internet. If you’re just flying around in the U.S., You can get an air ground system that’s relatively inexpensive.

David Wyndham (11:10):

If you’re flying internationally and you need coverage maybe over the polar regions, if you’re going northerly routes or transpacific, you’re talking to satellites, and those satellites are very expensive for data transmission. So if you want to livestream a sporting event, that’s going to cost you significant amounts of money, or if you’re just doing emails and things like that. So those airborne internet expenses will have generally a fixed component and a variable component to them. Those are the big ones. Again, there can be smaller things that are in either category.

Tony Kioussis (11:44):

Going back to an earlier comment you made about other costs, what other costs are there that an operator should keep in mind?

David Wyndham (11:52):

Yeah, there’s a couple that are infrequent and can be significant. I mentioned briefly earlier the cyclical nature of maintenance. Again, it varies from aircraft to aircraft, and what their maintenance schedule is, and utilization, and so forth. But most aircraft will see a significant maintenance inspection on the airframe every so many hours, so many years. It varies anywhere from, say, six to 12 years, or maybe eight to 10, 12,000 hours, where the aircraft goes in. Pretty much everything that can be opened up and looked at is opened up and looked at. There may be corrosion control. Major systems that are hard to get to like under the floor of the air cabin, interiors removed, things like that. Those are infrequent and significant costs.

Another one would be paint interior. Again, varies on the care of the aircraft, but roughly seven to 10 years, the aircraft exterior needs to be repainted. Interior needs to be updated and refurbished things like that. Those are quite often done as part of the major maintenance. And then the last part would be if your aircraft is going to be flown either part time or the majority of the time, under a Part 135 for hire, that Part 135 operator may have additional maintenance requirements or compliance requirements for your airplane that you wouldn’t have if you were flying Part 91 not for hire.

David Wyndham (13:16):

So those need to be budgeted for. The biggies on the major maintenance items and the paint interior items is they don’t occur very often, maybe every six to 10 years. But they’re significant when they occur and we’ll have a little discussion later on the cost per hour and where that really confuses people.

I think that actually brings up a good point, which is something we probably ought to discuss now, which is how does one track aircraft related expenses on a cost per hour, or on a cost per mile basis?

Generally speaking, the bigger number that people always look at is the cost per hour. That’s an awesome way to do it in that if I’m flying 300 hours next year, and it’s $4,000 an hour, boom, there’s the simple math. The problem with that is in transportation of people or property, we’re not going to get on the airplane today and say, “Let’s fly for three hours.” You’re going to say, “Let’s fly from Manassas, Virginia to St. Louis.” Whatever that happens to take is what it takes. It may be one hour and 45 minutes and maybe two hours and 15 minutes. And so while the costs are accrued based on hours, fuel burn per hour, for example, 200 gallons an hour, really at the end of the day, what does it cost me to get from Manassas to St. Louis? Yes, you can look at that as a cost per hour and as your own aircraft, that’s fine.

David Wyndham (14:37):

Where that gets to be difficult is when we’re comparing different makes and models of aircraft. Are we looking at a light jet flying 380 knots? And then we look at a midsize jet flying 420 knots, and let’s go spend the money and look at our really fast jet that’s flying 510 knots. All three of those aircraft are capable of making that trip from A to B, but the flight hours are different. So what’s the trip cost going to be?

So when you’re comparing aircraft, I really like to stress looking at a cost per mile. If you’re just looking at your own aircraft and you’re trying to budget for the next year, cost per hour is usually good. However, again, if you’re changing the operation around and it’s like, “Hey, we’re going to be flying a lot more longer trips next year. We’ve got five trips a month coast to coast coming up.” That’s going to really come up to how many miles and then how many hours is it to fly those miles? So it gets back to that cost per mile, at least in some form or function. But most of us in the budgeting, and most owners, and operators, and management companies still use cost per hour.

Tony Kioussis (15:43):

One area that we at Asset Insight have to explain quite often is the cyclical nature of maintenance. Can you get into that with us?

David Wyndham (15:51):

Sure. Let me tell a story. The aircraft owner, maybe around November, December, maybe even in June of the year, looks at how they’re doing actual versus budget. And somewhere in their little Excel spreadsheet from the management company says average cost per hour. And where things go off the rails is this. The owner looks at the aircraft, says, “My average cost per hour for my midsize jet is sitting at $12,000 an hour? I can charter a midsized jet for way less than that. What are you guys doing to me? You ripping me off.”

The initial response is, “What’s going on here?” The management company is trying to tell them, “Well, it’s because…” and they’re trying to explain things to them. But at that point, emotions take over. And then the management company has come to me on multiple occasions and said, “Okay, I’m calling a time out. We’ll send you anything you need. We’ll send you all the invoices. Will you work with the owner or the owner’s representative and explain it?”

David Wyndham (16:42):

So the typical explanation goes like this, “Dear Mr. Owner, the management company gave you a report that says if you budget, say, $3,000 per hour for your aircraft, that will include fuel, that will include maintenance, that will include your landing and parking fees, et cetera. That’s your variable expense, $3,000 an “hour.” Great. Then they send them the bills. They divide the bills by the hours flown and it comes up to that $12,000 an hour.

Where I need to explain it to the aircraft owner or even their CPA is, “You just had an inspection that happens every eight years. And so if you take the cost of that inspection divided by eight years worth of flying, you should have eight years ago put, say, $50 an hour into reserve for the last eight years at $400 per year. Instead, you just incurred the expense when the aircraft came out of maintenance at the end of June divided by the 100 hours you’ve only flown this year. Well, now your cost per hour average for this short time period is extreme.”

David Wyndham (17:46):

The last one I did was on a large business jet. The number they had was a $4,800 per hour figure. I went through and ran a should cost analysis on my own. I used the fuel cost and labor rates that the management company was quoting and I came up with something like $4,700.80 an hour, or something really, really close. So again, I used that to explain that, “Hey, if you did this for the last 10 years, you’d have had this much money in the bank to pay for that major inspection.”

David Wyndham (18:16):

So the fact that maintenance occurs on a cyclical event, and, generally speaking, the things that occur least frequently tend to have the highest dollar expense to them, that really throws off the cost per hour calculation when you look at it in a very narrow slice of time.

Tony Kioussis (18:34):

You know, right now we are seeing a lot lower utilization because of the pandemic. But some operators really don’t fly their aircraft that much on a regular basis even if the pandemic wasn’t here. What considerations are required under a low utilization environment?

David Wyndham (18:52):

There’s two considerations. One goes back to that cyclical nature of maintenance. If you have a lot of calendar based items, that every 30, 60, 90 days you’re going to do these items, the low utilization operator is going to see a very, very high maintenance bill. I had that with one aircraft, where the majority of the maintenance was done on a calendar basis, but the Conklin and de Decker published number was based on something like 350 hours per year. They were flying half of that.

David Wyndham (19:21):

So simple way of doing it is take the cost per hour times two and that was actually pretty close to what some of their experiences were. So that’s part of it. And the other part of the low utilization equation is all your fixed expenses. At some point, you may take those fixed expenses, your crew salaries, hanger, insurance, and so forth, and divide that into the hourly figure.

Then the last part has to do with really parking an airplane. It hasn’t been as bad yet, but I remember the ’08 recession. People parked the airplane and they sat for months, and months, and months. And unfortunately, some people literally parked the airplane and walked away. So if you’re under any kind of a guaranteed hourly maintenance program, those programs require you to maintain the aircraft according to the maintenance specifications from the manufacturer. Pretty much every manufacturer has a aircraft storage requirement that says if you’re not going to fly for a certain period of time, you need to do certain things.

David Wyndham (20:20):

It could be anything from just an engine run, and putting covers over the engines, and things like that to full on [inaudible 00:20:28] the airplane, park it in the desert, wrap it in a cocoon kind of thing. All of those expenses, again, depending on how little you’re flying, really drive up the average cost. So if this is a temporary aberration, where the airplane was down in March, and it didn’t fly much until middle of June, that second quarter budget versus actual, if going back to that per hour, it’s not going to look anywhere near accurate or pretty.

Tony Kioussis (20:53):

In your experience, what areas or issues are owners and operators most likely to misunderstand when it comes to operating costs?

David Wyndham (21:02):

The biggest areas, we’ve already covered a couple of them, are one, misunderstanding the cyclical nature of maintenance and looking at an average figure over a lengthy period of time and mistaking that for what it cost me today. Other areas can be, again, related to the cost of, say, personnel. Personnel costs are a significant part of owning and operating the airplane. These are highly trained, highly skilled individuals. They are worth every penny that they are paid.

David Wyndham (21:31):

I’ve gotten into this discussion with pilot salaries, where the owner says, “Well, my pilot only flew 250 hours last year, and I’m paying him over X, per year. That comes out to a huge hourly expense.” And the answer is, “Well, when they’re not flying, what are they doing?” Well, they’re training, they’re doing publication updates. In a small flight department, they could even be sweeping the hanger and supervising the airplane as it gets washed, or running errands to get the catering done, some of the local flights and things like that. So that’s another area where they’ll misunderstand it.

Then the last area tends to be relating to like taxes and depreciation and things like that. On the tax issue, again, talk to your CPA. The big tax issue is these airplanes are extremely valuable and they move. Real estate is extremely valuable, but it’s very hard to move. So if you build a building in New Jersey, your tax exposure is pretty much limited to New Jersey. You’re not likely to take your warehouse and move it to Pennsylvania. Aircraft, however, you can have aircraft based in New Jersey, but if it flies to Texas and California and back to New Jersey, you could, depending on the situation, be exposed to taxes in more than just New Jersey or vice versa. So the tax situations, again, that’s not a reason not to fly to a certain state. It’s just a matter of planning and getting good tax advice.

Tony Kioussis (22:48):

I have to ask you this somewhat selfishly, but what is it that Asset Insight, and indeed the industry as a whole, can do to better improve understanding and communication when it comes to costing?

David Wyndham (22:59):

Well, I’m also going to be selfish and say, “Well, listen to this podcast,” of course. But ask questions. On our side, as the aviation side of the equation, we need to be able to take the time to communicate to our owners and their representatives what these costs are. Going back to the management company with the big bill on the maintenance. Yeah, they told them for the last two years, “Hey, in two years, you’re going to have this expense. In 18 months, you’re going to have this expense. In next year’s budget, I’m putting in X for this expense.”

Well, if you tell them every six months, maybe you have to tell them every three months, maybe it has to be a line item at the bottom of every monthly invoice, things like that. Just communicate that these are costly assets to own and operate, extremely valuable assets. Prepare them in advance that these things need to be done. And obviously, maintenance needs to be done, but things like paint interior and so forth. “Well, why do I have to paint the airplane? It looks okay to me.” Well, part of the paint job is there to make the airplane look nice. Part of the paint job is to protect the exterior of the aircraft against corrosion. Anybody who’s had a little speck of corrosion that to the casual observer on the ground says, “I can’t even see it,” to the maintenance professional says, “Oh my, this is going to cost money.”

David Wyndham (24:16):

So you’re just communicating these things to the owners and, yeah, preparing them over, and over, and over again for those big expenses when they occur. Or in most cases or many cases, selling the value of these guaranteed hourly maintenance programs as a way to avoid that huge bite. I can remember one of the seminars Conklin and de Decker used to run called Aircraft Acquisition Planning, we’d have a budgeting session. Part of the budgeting session was talking about guaranteed hourly maintenance costs.

We showed two slides. One slide had a straight horizontal line. The other slide was up and down, up and down, up and down like zigzag, W, or V, or whatever. We said, “How many people here are in the financial world in some way, shape or form? Banking, finance, CFOs, accountants, et cetera?” Six people would raise their hand. “How many people liked the budget that goes in a straight line?” All six people raised their hand.

David Wyndham (25:07):

There’s a known factor in amongst all the other reasons to look at these guaranteed hourly maintenance programs that can sell themselves. And a lot of times people say, “Well, why should I reserve for an engine overhaul that’s not going to happen for 10 or 12 years? I’ll just pocket my money today.” It sometimes gets hard to explain that whether it’s you or the next owner, that money is going to be paid, and it’s going to be either paid when the event occurs, or if you go to sell the airplane, the next owner is going to take that engine status into account.

I think that’s something that you at Asset Insight are trying to do, Tony, with your maintenance exposure. You take all those items of maintenance, component overhauls, and life under parts, and say, “How much have we used up? And how much do we have a hourly maintenance program that’s taking care of that? Or are we exposed to that future expense?”

Tony Kioussis (25:57):

I think the hourly cost maintenance programs to your point are a great budgeting tool. If nothing else, that is a superb way of budgeting your expenses. Along those lines, is there a key to a quick and easy way by which one can structure an operating cost budget?

David Wyndham (26:14):

Yeah. I learned this from Jim Lara at Greystone Partners, good friend, long time business aviation consultant. The trick is this. The budget has two parts to it. If you get the first part, the second part is extraordinarily easy. The first part is define and agree on the assumptions. If you define and agree on the assumptions, then the last part literally is putting a couple numbers into a spreadsheet and pressing calculate, and print, and sending it off to whoever’s managing the flight department.

If you assume that we’re going to fly 300 hours next year, if you assume that we’re going to need to train the pilots twice a year, if you assume that fuel is going to stay stable at the current rate, if you assume that we’re not going to need to do any major maintenance on the airframe, if you make all those assumptions and you agree to them, then plugging in those numbers and coming up with your operating budget for next year is great.

David Wyndham (27:11):

Then next year comes along, say, you did that in 2019, then 2020 comes along and you say, “Park the airplane. We’re not going anywhere. This COVID thing’s got us all working from home.” Then you have to go back and say, “Sounds great. However, we’ve just changed several of the assumptions that we have here.” So the budget is no longer a valid planning tool or even benchmarking tool.

So it’s really, it’s getting those assumptions agreed to. You can’t fly 300 hours one year and 400 hours the next year and keep your operating budget exactly the same. Nor can you go from a 300 hour annual budget to 150 hour annual budget and keep your cost per flight hour the same. So basically, spend the time upfront getting the assumptions together. Then the actual budget numbers are relatively straightforward. It’s like planning versus execution. If you sharpen your blade, then it’s only a few swings of the ax to take down the tree.

Tony Kioussis (28:05):

Never thought about it that way, but it makes infinite sense. You invested a great deal of your business career with Conklin and de Decker and are now selling aircraft with Par Avion. Is there anything specific that you would want people to know about your new firm and your new role within the business aviation community?

David Wyndham (28:22):

Of interest is Al Conklin and Bill de Decker came into what became Conklin and de Decker through the aircraft sales world. Al didn’t sell the Wright flight or the Wright brothers. I think he did sell Glen Curtis’s first airplane. I don’t know. Got to check that. But Al and Bill came in through the aircraft sales world, which then led them into Conklin and de Decker, said, “How could we have made our lives easier? And how could we make the owner’s lives easier?”

So then I came into Conklin and de Decker, learned from them, and learned on my own, and developed that. So this is me versus their career path and going into the aircraft sales world. One of the things I like about Par Avion and Janine Iannarellii, is it’s a small company. I’m really, really happy and enjoy being part of a small company because then everybody gets to do what’s needed. Small company, everybody’s sales, everybody’s marketing, everybody’s customer support. Some days, everybody’s IT trying to figure out how come their computer won’t boot up.

And then another thing is at Par Avion, it’s a boutique, if you will, service. High touch, high ethics, high transparency, which fits in with everything I’ve done from day one at Conklin and de Decker, just very much personal touch, high ethics. The personality seems to be a good fit as well. Working with Janine, she’s been very supportive in pointing out a lot of the nuances of aircraft sales. It’s a new education that’s broadening my experience in this aviation industry and I think making me even more valuable to our industry, and, hopefully, I can return that to both owners and operators.

Tony Kioussis (29:51):

This has been another Asset Insight podcast covering the aircraft ownership life cycle. Please visit our ever-growing podcast library at AssetInsightPodcast.com, and select from any number of topics discussed with business aviation industry experts. This is Tony Kioussis and, as always, thank you for listening.