Time is money to the owner and the
operator, like you said.
So that downtime is very important.
And again, I think that's a
bigger factor than just price.
Welcome to Own the Jet by Aspen Aero
Group, where we share
perspectives from some of the
leading voices in private jet ownership
and business aviation.
I'm your host, Derik Savage, along with
my co-host, Jason
Spoor, president of Aspen Aero Group
Our guest today is Stephen
Maiden from West Star Aviation.
As the CEO of West Star, Stephen leads one of
the largest and most respected teams in
maintenance, repair and
overhaul services for private jets.
Join us as we dive deep into the
mechanics, mindset and
moments that define jet
ownership. And together, we'll learn what
it takes to own the jet.
Stephen Maiden, CEO of West Star.
Welcome to Own the Jet.
Thank you so much for being here.
Glad you're here.
Thank you for having me.
I am super excited to be
here and be a part of this.
Tell me for the uninitiated, right?
Can you just give me an
overview of what West Star does?
So West Star Aviation is an acronym MRO, a
maintenance, repair and overhaul
facility. We focus on
maintenance on business jets.
If I'm buying a jet, do I,
as part of that transaction, do I get
introduced to you and your team or am I
expected to kind of like have my own
maintenance stuff figured out?
How does that work if I'm buying a jet?
So typically you would have a
representative if you're buying a jet for
the first time, you're
probably working with a broker.
That broker typically has relationships
with the maintenance community.
Your first introduction to a maintenance
provider would be through your
pre-purchase inspection.
So typically a buyer is buying an
airplane and they will do a pre-purchase
inspection. It would go
to a maintenance facility.
Yeah.
Say it went to West Star and then we would
do the defined inspection.
We would look at your records, provide a
whole records review of kind of the
history of the airplane.
Okay.
It's inspection, you know, pedigree.
And then we would perform an inspection.
We would provide a list of discrepancies
and then it would be like a
pre-inspection of a home.
But that would be your first introduction
into working with a maintenance
provider like West Star.
So typically if somebody does the
pre-inspection with West Star, is it kind of
assumed that they're going to keep
working with you after they purchase that
jet or is it just kind of up to them?
So it is up to them.
You know, it's a great opportunity to
make a first impression.
Our industry, you know, typically we are
on an annual calendar based
inspection schedule.
So that airplane would come due for a
mandatory inspection probably within
the next 12 months.
And, you know, we would be a potential
option, especially if that pre-purchase
inspection went very well.
So can you tell us the
history and where you are now?
Yeah.
So the West Star that everybody knows of
today really started a journey back in
2002 when what we call our founders
bought a company called Premier Air
Center in East Alton,
Illinois, which is right out of St. Louis.
And that business the year before they
bought it did about $7 million worth of
business.
So relatively small back in 2002 and then
in 2005 they acquired the West Star
name, which was out in
Grand Junction, Colorado.
We started out having small
maintenance shops at each FBO.
You know, today there that has there's
been a lot of consolidation.
But yeah, we are one of
the largest independent MROs.
You know, across the United States, but
in the world, we've won the number one
MRO 10 out of the last 11 years.
So I'll allow that survey to stand on its
own, but super proud of our team at
West Star.
As people are getting into jet ownership
and they're, you
know, I don't know, maybe
they have their jet for a little while.
What are some situations where they might
be introduced to you versus the
competitors?
Like do they have to be like, I don't
know, do they go with
an MRO and that's the
only MRO they go to?
Or is it just kind of
like on a case by case basis?
Like if people are thinking about the
analogy of like car ownership, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Do I like if my alternator goes out, do I
go to like this specific, you know, place
to get it fixed or is it just, I don't
know, you know what I'm saying?
Like is it on my case by case basis?
Every airplane has, almost every airplane
has a calendar based requirement.
So that airplane has to get
inspected on an annual basis.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you have that recurring nature of the
maintenance requirement, but you have to
win that event every single year.
And typically it really is highly
dependent on how you performed in the
previous inspection.
Right.
So when you say you have to win that
event, you mean you guys have to make the
case for them bringing it to you.
That's right.
Yeah.
And typically the owner, the operator,
the director of maintenance or the chief
pilot is typically going out and getting
two or three different quotes.
But if, if you are the tried and true
maintenance provider that has performed
time and time again from an on-time
performance, from a quality perspective,
from a safety, you know, systems
perspective, I think
you put yourself in a
much better position to re-win that
recurring inspection.
What are some of the things that maybe
you're asking people in that situation,
right, when they have the choice to go
with West Star or Brand
X or whatever, right?
What are some of the things you're asking
them to try to get them to see the
differentiators, see the reasons that
they would want to go
with West Star versus the
competition?
There's a lot of really good maintenance
providers out there.
And I'm going to ask you to slam it.
Yeah, no, no, we're all friends.
And we don't look at it as competition.
We really don't.
There's so much demand that's out there.
I think the difference is, are
you going to a one-stop shop?
Are you, are you going to, you know, when
things go wrong and you've got to look at
it, a director of maintenance or a chief
pilot, when they're making a decision to
take their airplane somewhere, you got to
look at it from their perspective that
their job is on the line.
So when things go wrong, you want to be
at a place where you
feel safe and secure and
that that facility is capable.
So, you know, I think you look at it,
there is the OEM perspective and that's a
very good, easy answer for somebody to
say, hey, I want my
airplane to be maintained
by the OEM.
At the same point, there are, you know,
various other options
in the OEM and the OEM
can't support every
airplane that's out there.
Most OEMs have less than 50
percent of the market share.
Do the OEMs want that market share?
I mean, is that a thing that they're
trying to go after or?
Yeah, I mean, they don't have the
capacity to support 100
percent of the market share.
So I think they focus on,
you know, a certain vintage.
Certainly they want to support in
warranty airplanes,
airplanes that are probably five
years or newer.
Each of the OEMs have
a different strategy.
But at the end of the day, there isn't
enough capacity for all of the demand.
Yeah.
You know, so again, I think it puts the
independent in a good position to be a
really good alternate to to
the OEM from my perspective.
So more about you.
How did you get into this?
So, you know, I'm probably like a lot of
people that watched the famous movie in
1986 and fell in love with
with aviation coming out of top.
Yeah, top.
Top gun.
But join the Air Force.
It was literally the single best decision
that I probably ever made in my life and
spent just over four years, you know,
working on F-16s and transitioned out to
business aviation and was very fortunate
to get, you know,
have a career immediately
out of the military.
So you are an A&P.
So I'm yeah, I'm a by
trade and avionics technician.
OK, yeah.
I was an environmental and electrical
technician in the Air
Force, but transitioned.
And then, yes, I did go
become a mechanic as well.
So not only, you know, are you are you
the leader and CEO of
this company, but you
understand it from the floor right to
right to where you are.
I do.
And I think, you know, that's something
I'm very proud of, is
that I can relate to,
you know, all of our employees.
I understand it.
You probably don't want me working on an
airplane anymore, but I do love it.
And I love certainly strategizing and
troubleshooting and
talking through difficult
problems.
I love airplanes, but yeah, I certainly
can relate to our technicians.
What do you think about Iron Eagle?
Do you think Iron Eagle
was a little bit too bad?
I love that movie.
Because that was kind of my thing.
Like I love don't get me wrong.
Top Gun was great.
But like my stepdad, who was a pilot, had
a copy of Iron Eagle
on VHS and I just wore
that thing out, man.
Like Doug Masters
going to rescue his dad.
I was like, hell yeah.
That's right.
Let's do it.
I'm flying that 172.
So I probably watched that for that movie
one time for every
three that I watched Top
Gun.
But okay.
Top Gun was great.
Don't get me wrong.
Like like like the
soundtrack to Top Gun was amazing.
The like everything about
Top Gun was different budgets.
Yeah, different budgets too.
And I feel like I feel like at the time
it's like one of those
situations where it's like,
oh, we're making, you
know, jet movies now.
Let's make a, you know, every studio is
kind of like here's our jet movie.
They did the same thing with Volcanoes.
About a decade later.
That's right.
So anyway, you know, going back to
competition and everything though.
So I don't have to go to Westar.
I can choose whatever I want, but you're
trying to make
yourselves a default in people's
minds.
Is that right?
Yeah, we're driving initiatives to be a
differentiator and
everybody's following the
same maintenance manual and it comes down
to the processes and
procedures that you put in
place that differentiate
you from the competition.
And that's really what we're focused on.
Again, we don't have all the capacity to
support all the demand that's out there.
We have one point
seven million square feet.
So we're, you know, we're
large at the same point.
We only have a fraction of the market.
We only have, you know, 13, 14 percent
market share in all of
the demand that's out there.
Gotcha.
So there's a there's a few organizations
out there that do the whole
MRO thing and kind of go to
the market with the same
thing that you guys are doing.
But you're differentiating yourself as,
you know, maybe the one
that's most and I don't like I
said, I don't want to slam anyone else,
but you're the default, right?
The we want to be
everybody's first choice.
And there you go.
And again, a big part of our business is
doing completions, you know, like our
modifications.
So like interior paint, avionics, you
know, modifications or upgrades.
So that's a big part of it.
Is that kind of like what you guys
specialize in versus some
of the competition maybe?
No, we do it all.
You know, we're doing airframe
maintenance, but we're also doing
modifications while those
airplanes are in.
So 40 percent of our work that comes in
for a scheduled
maintenance event has a modification
attached to it.
So we have to be really
good at complex projects.
I mean, you're talking about
multi-million dollar projects, months
long projects that need
explicit and precise, you know, project
management, planning,
scheduling and prethought
going into it.
Nothing ever goes as it's supposed to.
Right.
You find major corrosion or you find that
there was a modification done before you
you're getting into the airplane that
creates a little bit of a wrinkle.
So how do you handle those situations?
You know, when they come up is something
that we specialize in
and we are hyper focused in
to make sure that we're meeting the
commitment that we set at
the onset of the project.
So turn times, down times, commitments.
Well, that's all a great thing to kind of
go into because it's like
I'm thinking if I've paid
all this ridiculous amount of money for a
jet and then I take it in
and you're like, yeah, it's
going to be a couple
months before we get this thing.
And I'm like, I just paid all this money
so I could fly anywhere
I want to whenever I want
to. How do you handle that?
So I mean, from the
broker standpoint, right?
Well, we're making sure I want to go to
New York standpoint.
Right. Right.
How do you make me happy?
That we're bringing the right airplane to
Westar to begin with.
So hopefully we've done enough due
diligence on the front end.
Yeah.
So we get this into a pre buy situation.
Sure.
And that's where we
would have discovered this.
Right. Gotcha.
But I mean, on the
annual inspections, right.
And you're talking about some of these
things with the
modifications or what have you.
Down time matters.
The downtime.
I think if you go to the owner of the
airplane or the operator of
the airplane, it's the prices are
relatively standard across the industry.
If you brought the airplane to West Star, if
you take it to another MRO, the out the
door price is really
going to be negligible.
Okay.
I think where you can set yourself apart
is driving the
commitment of turnaround time.
And time is money to the owner and the
operator, like you said.
Yeah.
Typically, these airplanes are used from
the moment that they're dropped off.
It's like an inbound flight that they
just wrapped up an hour or
a couple hours or days ago.
And then there's a flight
on the backside of that.
So that downtime is very important.
And again, I think that's a
bigger factor than just price.
Yeah.
So how do you manage that?
And how do you set that expectation?
It really is in the secret
sauce of each of the MROs.
And I think that's how you
schedule, how you pre-plan.
It's the experience of your labor.
And that's another thing.
We have our own internal training staff
where we invest tens of thousands of
hours a year on internal
training to make sure that our people are
well prepared for when that
inspection or that airplane
comes in, that they know
what they're looking for.
They know how to perform the maintenance.
And again, we mitigate any issue that
comes up to try to reduce downtime or
make sure that we're on
time to what we committed to.
30 percent of-- we
measure everything at West Star.
In times, out times,
what we have committed.
And we do an NPS survey at
the follow-on of every event.
Net promoter score.
Got it.
That's for me.
And one of the things that we do is were
we on time in the
customer's eyes, not our eyes.
And we never used to
measure early deliveries.
But once we did, about 11
percent of our events were early.
Where today we're running 30 percent of
our events are delivering earlier than
what we had originally
committed.
And that's a key metric for us because,
again, we want to be on time or early.
At the same point, you don't want to have
so much cushion in an event where
somebody plans four weeks
and that's what they plan.
And all of a sudden, on day 20, you call
them up and say, hey,
your airplane's ready.
You need to make sure that you're keeping
the customer updated on when their
airplane is going to be
return to service.
Yeah.
Is there a boilerplate kind of
expectation I should have?
Like if I have-- or is it
just on a case by case basis?
But if I-- and that's fine if it is.
And if it's just like you don't know till
you know, that's fine.
But is there something that I should
expect when I have my
annual inspection done?
It sounds like that's like
the big event each year, right?
So when I have that inspection done and I
have whatever needs to be done during
that time done, you know,
and once again, I'm thinking about cars
like, you know, you got your one hour of
oil change or whatever, right?
What is there an expectation about how
long this should take and what kind of
downtime should be associated
with that?
So there is a
progressive inspection schedule.
So your first annual inspection may be a
certain amount of downtime.
Next year it's bigger and then kind of it
goes to the major inspection, which is
every four or five years.
And then it kind of resets.
So the downtime is really predicated on
that inspection, that
specific inspection.
Okay.
The typical findings that you find, the
discrepancies that you find while you're
doing the inspection,
every airplane and every
vintage of airplane has a different
squawk rate or a discrepancy rate.
Okay.
So based on our experience,
we'll be able to provide that.
And then we do a mathematical equation of
how many hours are we going to apply to
that airplane every single day?
And then that determines the uptight.
And then, you know, so that's
something we measure against.
I think in our perspective, it's some of
the larger scale MROs,
you have multiple shifts.
So you have to leverage the 24 hour clock
to your advantage if you really want to
shrink the downtime to what we're talking
about. So, you know, at Westar, we have a
first shift, we have a second shift, and
then we have weekend coverage as well.
We're looking at filling out those off
shifts to make sure that we
have equality across all shifts.
But again, we look at it as a 24 hour
clock and that's one way to differentiate
West Star from everybody else.
You had mentioned earlier an acronym that
I kind of latched onto, AOG.
What does that mean?
So that's Aircraft on Ground.
And that's when you're flying around and
you need to go to New York and your
airplane lands in New
York and there's a problem.
And those strict standards that the
aviation community has to abide by
requires maintenance
before the airplane can fly.
That airplane is no longer airworthy.
So I'm just not allowed
to fly it at that point.
Yeah, it's exactly it.
The crew knows with those...
Sorry, Pat, you got a busted canooter
valve, this thing ain't airworthy.
That's it.
Yeah.
OK, gotcha.
So we got to call
someone, we got to get it fixed.
That's right.
So back in the day, you
used to call local people.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, now, you know, we have, you know,
Aircraft on Ground or AOG or mobile
maintenance teams to be able to go
support those events.
There's a lot of them out there.
We are the largest.
We have over 200 AOG and MRT technicians
dedicated to that business unit.
We have a 24-7 dispatch center and
maintenance control center that is, you
know, there to answer the phone, talk
through any technical issues that the
airplane is having, make sure that we get
the right tooling and equipment to the
airplane to minimize that impact.
Because that can be a big deal.
Like a lot of times I would assume that a
lot of times people don't find out about
these AOG events until
they're like ready to go somewhere.
Is that or there is or they've already
gone somewhere or they've already gone
somewhere and they're stuck.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
That's that's that makes it worse when
you're gone and you're out
in the middle of somewhere.
So you guys are fully equipped to handle
those types of events.
And that like West Star is kind
of the place to call for those.
So, yeah, no doubt we have that service.
I think our advantage is again, we have
200 technicians across the country.
We can we certainly can get a technician
or a group of technicians to that
airplane in a very rapid method or pace.
But they get the benefit
of the entire enterprise.
Right.
OK, we have 3000
employees, over 2500 technicians.
We have a, you know, technical experts
at, you know, in each platform.
We've got trainers in each platform that
our AOG technicians
could go and leverage.
If there's this one troublesome issue or
trying to work through a
very difficult situation.
But yeah, it's one of the things that,
again, does separate us from from the
market is not only can you get your
scheduled inspection done with us,
but we, you know, when things go wrong,
when you're out on the road, we have this
expansive AOG team that can support you.
Nice.
Can you talk to me about like the kind of
where you see the
industry going right now?
And and one of the things that maybe some
initiatives or some things that Westar
might be doing specifically to or maybe
not even specifically,
but just generally to
I don't know, to position yourselves well
with the way that you
see the industry going.
Look, the the industry is growing.
OK, we're you know, it's growing at six,
seven percent a year.
Airplanes are getting bigger.
So there's there's larger
airplanes being delivered.
Yeah, airplanes are
flying more hours than ever.
They're flying longer
distances than ever.
And airplanes are staying around longer
because of the technology,
you know, in the way
they're being manufactured.
So the retirement age
has pushed pushed out.
So there's just more airplanes around.
So the our industry and certainly the
airframe maintenance side of the business
is growing, you know, on a seven and a
half percent Kager every year.
OK. And that's what the outlook is for
the next 10 plus years.
So there isn't enough capacity to support
all of these really large airplanes that
are being delivered.
So square footage capacity hanger sizes
are only getting larger.
And, you know, we have
invested in two builds.
We're building a brand new
hangar in Grand Junction.
We're building another
hangar in Chattanooga
to keep up with that that demand.
But that that's one of the
ways that we're doing it.
But again, we only have a fraction of the
market share that's out there.
But, you know, that's one of the ways
that we're trying to invest in ourselves
to be able to support the industry.
Nice. What would you say to somebody?
You know, because I'm looking I'm looking
at where the industry is right now and
kind of like, you know, we've got a lot
of people buying new jets
because of the the tax situation that,
you know, has happened this year.
And I like to ask this is kind of like a
almost like a bit of advice for people
that are looking to get into jet
ownership or maybe they've been
chartering or what have you.
What would you say to somebody in terms
of MROs and maintenance and thinking
about that if they are getting ready to
get into jet ownership the first time?
What what what one thing would you like
them to know more than anything else?
Yeah, I don't think everybody is equal.
And I think there's a there's a lot of
great options that are out there.
But the way that I look at it is when
things go wrong, can that maintenance
provider support that event?
And, you know, I think that's what
separates, you know, the the different
providers that are out there
when there is major corrosion,
when you have to pull a wing off and you
have to pull pull the
whole vertical or tail off.
You know, because that stuff happens when
they're when you need to reskin a
significant part of the fuselage or just
the technical experience of
how to rig complex systems.
I think, you know, that
is a big differentiator.
You know, I think everybody, you know, me
and in a couple other MPs can go out and
do an inspection and
everything could be fine.
It's really what when things go wrong.
The other thing is naturally, there's a
pretty big differentiator.
And when you have modifications, when
you're going to tear the
whole airplane, the interior part,
and you're going to go, you know, wire a
whole new system or a
complex cabin management system,
you know, think through, you know, the
difficulty of that project, because I
could tell you it's highly complex.
And it requires a precision type planning
to be able to make sure
that that event goes well.
Well said. I mean, that's that's that's a
great thing to be thinking about if I'm
getting into ownership of a jet, because
it's like it's not a Honda Civic.
It's not. Yeah, it's not. It's not just
an easy thing to get into.
And sometimes you don't know until you
start, you know, looking under the hood.
Just remember, these airplanes are flying
two miles or so above the ground.
They're highly crazy,
crazy fast speeds. Yeah.
Yeah. Again, I think that's the key
component there is is just making sure
that you've got the right systems and
processes to to deal with the complex
situations that business aviation brings.
Nice. Any closing thoughts?
Anything else you want to you want to
mention before we wrap things up?
No, I can't I can't thank you enough for
the opportunity to talk a
little bit about West Star,
but more about talking about the industry
and in owning a jet and in what you need
to think through from the
maintenance perspective.
Again, very honored and
grateful to be a part of this.
No, we're glad to hear. Thank you so much
for being here and
taking the time to do it.
So yeah, awesome. Cool.
Stephen, thank you very much.
I appreciate it. Thanks again. Thanks.
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