What do you get when you combine southern charm with a hard-driving entrepreneur-owner? After tripling its fleet in the past five years to 24 airplanes, Nicholas Air is one of the nation’s largest charter operators. It’s growing by combining a Welchian ethos of ingenuity and accountability, mixed with Ritz-Carlton-style “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen” service.
And if, like competitors, you think being based in Mississippi makes it some type of sleepy backwater operation, that’s just fine with executives here. They see it as an advantage, and one thing is for sure – they’re not sleeping.
The typical workdays for executives at its new Oxford corporate offices start before seven o’clock in the morning. There is a gym on the first floor and a locker facility with showers. There’s a gourmet kitchen, which is often used to churn out impromptu breakfasts for the team. It’s also a venue for the local chefs to show off their talents for customers, who sometimes just drop by.
There’s a TV studio to create professional internal and external videos. The wide hallways are accented with buffed aluminum strips from retired 747s, 777s and DC-3s, juxtaposed with floor-to-ceiling walls of high-definition monitors and displays of company history. One might imagine they are in the C-suite of a technology company, or a Hollywood set of what a corporate office of the future should look like.
An oversize, state-of-the-art boardroom obfuscates that there is no board of directors at Nicholas Air. There are also no investment funds or outside investors.
The Beginnings
Airline namesake Nicholas J. Correnti started the company in 1997 and is still nearly a full year away from his 40th birthday. Prematurely gray with GQ-style, his take no prisoners business approach may not be for everyone, but it has built a hardcore following of loyal customers.
After taking his first flying lesson at age 12, he soloed in four different aircraft types for his 16th birthday. From there, he pestered his parents to buy him an airplane, which became the launching pad for what is now the 12th largest operator in the country, measured by fractional and charter flight hours. Executives say their numbers are undercounted, and they are actually in the ninth spot.
A Different Approach
Either way, Correnti is carving a different path in the cluttered world of private aviation. There are no leadership councils or board of directors. Correnti owns 100% of Nicholas Air. Still, there is profit sharing, which is the basis for its culture of accountability. Mistakes – and the cost of mistakes – are shared internally with the goal of making sure they aren’t repeated.
You won’t find the founder sitting through long slide presentations. However, the vice president of sales and marketing, Peder von Harten, says informal management meetings can range from 20 minutes to five hours. The brainstorming cum strategy sessions feature lively discussions. In the end, decisions are made, and if they aren’t working out as planned, they may be adjusted.
That said, Nicholas Air is far from zigging and zagging. In fact, it may be flying one of the steadiest courses in the industry. Its high-touch approach, pristine cabins and modern fleet, which averages less than five years, has attracted a celebrity following, including the likes of Steve Stricker, Nicole Kidman, Eli Manning and Tom Brokaw. High-profile customers aside, its jet card members tend to be a mix of entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs who use Nicholas Air for personal flights.
Moving To Oxford
Nicholas Air’s new headquarters, which opened just last year, isn’t located at the nearby airport. That would be more expensive - a waste of money. However, the move from Columbus, about 100 miles away, to the home to the University of Mississippi, a House & Garden-type town with manicured lawns and an eclectic variety of bars and restaurants, is all about the future.
Columbus is a manufacturing hub, where Correnti picked up his work ethic helping in a steel factory his father built and owned. He started sweeping floors. In the pre-Covid full-employment environment, it was difficult to attract service and technology talent there. About 90 minutes from Memphis, Oxford has widened the pool.
And if you are still wondering about Mississippi, Correnti sees the low cost base, can-do attitude and lack of expensive big city office space as a critical advantage.
Nicholas Air’s ROI
Correnti says he focuses on investing profits where there is an ROI with customers, which is mainly avoiding delays, offering new and clean airplanes, combined with high-touch service. Prior to the pandemic, customer contact employees, including pilots, received training via The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.
The Nicholas Air approach means having top management intensively engaged in the minutiae of daily operations. Executives' offices have a live audio feed from the 24/7 operations center in the middle of the complex. If an air traffic hold is putting a crimp in schedules, Correnti and his leadership team jump in, figure out the options, and get on the phone to customers, giving them an update on what’s happening in advance.
In another twist, Nicholas Air has a Cessna Caravan that customers will never fly in. It runs parts to aircraft when they have mechanicals away from base. Instead of waiting for a slot with a busy MRO or ferrying the airplane somewhere for repairs, canceling customers’ flights, maintenance workers get the parts needed to fix the broken airplane, board the single-engine prop with a cleaning crew, and if possible, get the repairs done overnight, putting the aircraft back into service.
While Nicholas Air cleaning crews meticulously pick at and wipe down the spaces between sidewalls and floorboards for crumbs and other grime, working late into the night, they know it’s not unusual that in Oxford, Correnti will pop by to look. When the floating fleet is out on the road, there are six crews that drive to the jets, again working into the wee hours. During the day, pilots are expected to detail the airplanes prior to flights.
By the same token, unlike many floating fleet operators, management isn’t trying to maximize flight hours on the aircraft. The only way to access the Nicholas Air fleet is via its jet card program. It does have a limited fractional share offering it doesn’t actively promote. Unlike other closed fleet operators, the company doesn’t sell charter flights on a one-off basis, wholesale or retail.
Von Harten says, “Our customers are used to flying with our pilots and they are used to flying on specific tails. They treat our planes like it’s their home, their plane.”
Small touches are important. Pilot uniforms include blue ties and accents, something designed to make them easy to spot if you walk into a crowded FBO.
A Private Club
You won’t see Nicholas Air throwing big parties at major sporting events. Christmas gifts are often personalized, based on relationships that are built up over time. That’s what happens when you only have around 650 customers, many who have been with the company for years.
Von Harten says he and his sales team put together ad hoc fishing, hunting and golf outings, inviting clients on a one-off basis based on what they like, learned via informal conversations, not impersonal email surveys.
Those customers bring friends along, so being a member becomes a bit like being part of a club. When you join, you are welcomed with a letter from Correnti that includes his email and mobile phone number. Don’t expect a call, though – that would be an intrusion of your privacy, although he enjoys when customers pick up the phone just to say hello.
Something else you won’t see at Nicholas Air is acquisitions. Despite the frenzied M&A environment, Correnti says he has no plans to jump in. He simply plans to take customers from competitors one-by-one. He deadpans, “We have a better product, so why do I need to buy a company to buy their customers?” Over 90% of new customers are referrals from current customers. It’s the same with pilots referring pilots.
The current WIFI-equipped fleet ranges from the single-engine Pilatus PC-12 and Embraer Phenom 100 very light jet up to the super-midsize Citation Latitude and Challenger 300. However, the core is its light jet fleet of Citation CJ3s and Phenom 300s.
And despite its penchant for new airplanes, don’t expect any big orders. Correnti says he buys airplanes based on what members want, and because needs change and new types are introduced, he doesn’t see sense in making big bets.
“We’re not like a fractional company that is trying to make money buying and selling airplanes,” he says.
Spreading its bets extends to how Nicholas Air targets customers. Unlike many private aviation providers, it eschews a heavy focus on the New York City banking and finance industry. Von Harten says the company prefers a mix of customers in private companies across a wide variety of industries, lessening the impact of any wild swings in the economy.
While it may not have hundreds of aircraft, executives don’t see that as an issue. “You only fly in one airplane at a time,” von Harten says. At a time when many providers are having to go outside their fleets to fulfill customer flights, he adds, despite record demand, the company keeps customers on-fleet over 98% of the time. You can call it the Nicholas Air way.
