Long ago, sometime in the late 1990s-early 2000s, a colleague from the IAF, who was by then the private pilot of an ultra HNI, came to my father to ask if he’d be interested in meeting with his boss, who wanted to get into the airline business.
I remember Baba sitting through the night and preparing a presentation in which he very clearly advised the wealthy gentleman to avoid the airline business like the plague but instead get into secondary and tertiary businesses like ticketing, booking, airport operations, aircraft maintenance, food & logistics, pilot training and rostering, supply of ladders & vehicles, porters and check-in counter staff, and so on, which he said will always be in profit while airlines will probably never be.
In fact, he gave two case studies in detail, I remember distinctly: Air Works and Cambata Aviation, and even proceeded to recommend that this ultra HNI acquire one, or both of them, doing a rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation about their value then and what they might actually be worth in the next 20 years (which would be about now).
Needless to say, while his advice about not getting into the glamorous side of the airline business was indeed taken and the ultra HNI individual refrained from burning their fingers, his other advice on the alternate path into the airline industry was ignored. I can imagine that gentleman sitting and ruing the day when he chose to disregard good, solid, and profitable advice from a far-sighted and intelligent man who could have been his CEO.
Even today, the aerospace business (which now includes drones, UAVs, rockets, launch vehicles, satellites, and other areas of unmanned and manned flight and space exploration) has a non-glamorous side that will be more profitable than the visibly sexy side of the industry. If anyone has the vision, the money, and the nerve, I’d strongly suggest you take a good hard look at your options to be part of the future without needing to be in the public eye.
I’d love to be part of such an initiative. Hire me!
