Meet Thomas Flohr, the man behind Vista. The world&rsquo;s leader in business aviation is consolidating its position while owning the challenges of a rapidly evolving sector and redefining the concept of luxury.

Photography by Alan Gelati

As it happens with many leading entrepreneurs, the success of Thomas Flohr comes from a fortunate mix of intuition and good timing. The Founder and Chairman of Vista, currently the world's largest on demand business aviation companies, reaching 96% of the globe with a fleet of 360 aircrafts, first started to fly privately for business in his previous career, while working for an American firm in the finance business sector.
Back in the day, the private flight sector was a very different story. Jets still flew to major cities and made it possible to be in four different places during the same day, interacting with clients face to face and boosting business relations. But routes were often confined to one region and the industry was burdened by a series of inefficient logistics and lengthy paperwork, which was what inspired Flohr to rethink the whole sector, and ultimately get personally involved.
"I found out that this industry worked by having a broker looking only for the best rates for you," he starts saying, "so you didn&rsquo;t know what you got until you arrived at the airport. This is the opposite of what a top-end experience like flying private should be, especially for those types of clients&hellip; I had a look at chartering and quickly realised that the business model didn&rsquo;t make any sense in terms of asset management. So, out of frustration, I bought my first plane. I was always fascinated by how a plane looked when it comes out of the factory, with its silvery shine that became our signature silver with a red stripe look. But I also had to deal with all sorts of regulations for the interiors, the paint, the materials, and they were all different from one aircraft type to another. I experienced an extremely under-industrialised&nbsp;world. You had hundreds if not thousands of little garages and operators dealing with the maintenance and servicing aircraft for people around the world: it didn&rsquo;t make any sense&raquo;.

Having studied the many flaws in the system and determined to make it more efficient, Flohr&rsquo;s initial intuition became a true motto: flying private had to be simple. "My first plane delivered in December 2003," he recalls "and then I looked for a European operator, because as a Swiss citizen, a Swiss company couldn&rsquo;t fly within Europe. Everyone was obsessed with the concept of being &lsquo;home-based&rsquo;: &lsquo;where do you want to base your plane?&rsquo; To me, the home-base of a plane is the sky, while the industry&rsquo;s mindset was relying on this concept to ease the operations and servicing. I&rsquo;m an asset finance guy and the first plane I bought immediately made money because it didn&rsquo;t have a home-base airport, but many. I would be flying from Cairo to Abu Dhabi, and then charter the plane again from Abu Dhabi to avoid it flying empty. At that point I bought another plane for myself, and applied the same model of continuous chartering."
Seeing his intuition was right, and that his jets were far more profitable than those from the competitors, Thomas Flohr started to invest following a business model that maximised each aircraft&rsquo;s utilisation, finally building the global fleet we know today, connecting 187 countries and employing people of over 60 different nationalities. While doing that, he also thought of fixing the paperwork issue. "At VistaJet we have a simple&nbsp;five-pages contract, which basically says we have an obligation to transport, the client has an obligation to pay. That&rsquo;s all. If you go to a fractional aviation company, you&rsquo;ll need to sign a share-purchase agreement: 60 pages. Then an operating agreement. A management agreement. A surcharge agreement&hellip; all in all, between 150 and 200 pages. Clients just want to fly. If you go to the charter market you sign a simple contract, but you don&rsquo;t know what your product is until you arrive at the airport. It is never in the best interest of the client if the broker looks out for the cheapest option in order to make a profit. Who wants to fly on the cheapest option? Our fleet is such that there&rsquo;s always a plane available, anytime, anywhere, 24/7/365, no matter where you are around the world. Clients just want to fly on a product they know."

"As it happens with many leading entrepreneurs, the success of Thomas Flohr comes from a fortunate mix of intuition and good timing. The Founder and Chairman of Vista, currently the world's largest on demand business aviation companies, reaching 96% of the globe with a fleet of 360 aircrafts, first started to fly privately for business in his previous career, while working for an American firm in the finance business sector."

Once you are on board, all VistaJet aircrafts look the same. The dimensions may change, but interiors, colours and atmosphere are meant to be immediately recognisable on each plane so that clients feel like they&rsquo;re always in the same space. Flohr is very keen on offering an experience that&rsquo;s as non-disruptive as possible. As a busy businessman himself, he knows well that being constantly engaged and on the move makes time to think and nurture ideas a real asset, and turning aircraft into a place that can be used to focus, rather than getting distracted, has been a key element of his winning business intuition.
"Hollywood has partially distorted the picture about this industry," he explains. "This is really about efficient corporations. It&rsquo;s about the Chairmen and the CEOs, business leaders flying from point to point. And business is not just done between New York and London&hellip; the real entrepreneurial investment opportunities are in second and third tier cities, and you have to get there fast, point to point. You have to make sure that when your staff is flying there, they&rsquo;re safe, that they travel efficiently and come back straight to headquarters. And that&rsquo;s what we do."

Then there&rsquo;s the Ultra High-Net-Worth Individuals (UHNWI), also important customers for VistaJet. "That is the second big segment. Even in that case, there&rsquo;s always a business link &mdash; a big conductor flying somewhere to play, an actor promoting a movie. I always say that all our clients are somehow celebrities: leading surgeons, opera singers, investment bankers who are stars in their field. Once in the cabin, they expect a continuation of their lifestyle, something that has not been offered before in this industry. They want things to fit with their lives. We invest heavily into intelligent technology to understand our clients and learn as much as we can to then offer exactly that detailed service on board. It&rsquo;s very tailored to what the clients actually want."
We wonder what the UHNWI perceive as luxury, as people who already have it all. Thomas Flohr has no doubts: "Peace of mind. &lsquo;Luxury&rsquo; is being surrounded by products or providers that allow you to focus on what is important for you. That&rsquo;s why learning about our clients is so important, and giving them that comfort of a continuation of their lifestyle: it creates time and energy for them to focus on what it&rsquo;s important. Then of course there is the fine dining experience, the wine cellar and the fastest internet available onboard."
However, no success story is complete without an equally significant challenge, and running a private aviation business in 2023 means having to deal with several levels of criticism. The most&nbsp; important is the sustainability issue, for which the whole sector is being constantly scrutinised without much sympathy. The aviation industry is accountable for 2% of all carbon footprint in the world, and the business aviation is a 2% of that, so we&rsquo;re looking at 0.04% of the total global emissions. But being a very high profile sector, the stakes are high. VistaJet has a carbon neutrality goal to be achieved by 2025 across its entire operations. The question is how.

"Peace of mind. 'Luxury' is being surrounded by products or providers that allow you to focus on what is important for you."

"We want to be at the forefront of this and we want to lead the business aviation industry," answers Flohr "because we believe that this industry can push and force commercial aviation to speed up their carbon neutrality. We have a commitment to replace over 200 thousand gallons of conventional aviation fuel with SAF [Sustainable Aviation Fuel, a green alternative reducing carbon emission up to 80% when compared to standard fuel] next year &mdash; not only to offset emissions but actually reducing the carbon footprint that aviation usually has. We have a very influential customer base, and our sales team is tasked with having educational discussions with our clients to work together to achieve the ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] goals that the company has set. And we&rsquo;re now close to 90% of all our clients making a financial contribution to buy carbon offsets or SAF. How quickly we can grow our efforts is a question of distribution. For now, it&rsquo;s nowhere near covering flights over the whole globe, but we see its availability as exponentially growing: there&rsquo;s huge investment happening in the SAF space."
Once again, Thomas Flohr approaches what seems like a steep climb as an opportunity, knowing the niche sector he contributed to change so radically can leverage its influence to trigger even bigger changes, impacting positively on the whole aviation industry. Trusting his entrepreneurial mindset, he&rsquo;s trying to make a difference until even this matter is settled. Jet settled, if you may.

Jet Settled

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