In the exclusive world of executive aviation, Comlux is one of a kind.
This is not just because it is one of the few industry players operating at the top of the market, which includes airliners converted for private use such as Airbus Corporate Jets (ACJ) and Boeing Business Jets (BBJ). Comlux’s rather unique business model also sets it apart from others, with the firm covering every link in the value chain from the acquisition, sale, operation, and crewing of jets, to performing maintenance, cabin fittings and pretty much every service that a private jet user may need.
Comlux has even partnered with Airbus to develop an executive version of the Airbus A220 aircraft, a design it expects will create an entirely new category of large business jets.
When asked to summarize Comlux, Richard Gaona, the company’s CEO, used the word “diversification”.
Gaona is an industry veteran who headed Airbus’ corporate jet division for several years before joining Comlux in 2007.
“When I joined the group, the shareholders asked me to build up the company, to build up an aviation group,” Gaona told AeroTime. “And I have always tried to build a diversified business: diversified in what we are doing, diversified in terms of the territories where we operate and diversified in staff, because I strongly believe that an international team is always better able to understand the client.”
“If you satisfy a VIP client in one particular domain, you have a good chance that he will come back to you for either the same service or something different,” Gaona explained, before proceeding to enumerate the three main areas in which Comlux is active.
He started with Comlux’s work helping clients acquire or sell aircraft, along with the full set of services necessary to operate them.
“When they buy an aircraft in the Airbus or Boeing category, we are also able to do the interiors and operate the plane,” Goana said. “If the customer is happy, if the product is good, in three or four years, they are going to start thinking, ‘What should I buy next?’ I had several clients at Comlux who have been going through this exercise several times.”
He continued: “They have been buying one plane after another every three to four years, and we are their advisors. We are helping them buy at the best price because we are not working for any OEM [Original equipment manufacturer] or as an agent for someone else. We work only for our clients. We are fully transparent.”
Comlux also has an airline division dedicated to helping owners manage their aircraft. For example, by occasionally renting them out on a charter basis. In this regard, Gaona further elaborated on how Comlux’s different business areas support and complement each other. For example, if customers that rent an aircraft have a good experience they may come back and ask for advice on how to acquire their own. When they take this step, Comlux will then provide them with an A-to-Z service.
“We help our customers acquire the plane in the best condition and we then help them build the interior they want,” Gaona said. “Once this is done, we operate the aircraft for them as well. This is how our company has been operating for more than 20 years.”
Diversification at Comlux is also geographical.
“There is always something happening somewhere in the world, territories where you cannot go because there is some problem,” Gaona said. “If you are only in that territory, you die. So, that’s why we are almost everywhere. In America, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia. And we also try to respond to the market demand because this is something you can’t control. It’s the customer who decides.”
Comlux also has its own completion center and MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) facilities in Indianapolis, United States, where it can customize and refit aircraft cabins.
“The MRO is complementary to our cabin completion activity,” Gaona said. “MRO is not our core business, but we are very well placed when it comes to doing maintenance on VIP aircraft. If the client decides to upgrade the cabin or change something we are very good at doing that.”
He continued: “We are also doing maintenance work and C-checks on VIP aircraft. For example, right now, we are doing an A319. We don’t do engines because this is controlled by the engine manufacturers, but if we have to remove an engine and send it to the shop, we will do it. It’s part of our job.”
“We are a service center approved by Airbus and Boeing,” he added. “We were originally doing some Bombardier maintenance as well, but Bombardier has now decided to take care of its own after sale service to the point that, for us, there isn’t enough volume to maintain this activity, so we have preferred to focus on ACJs and BBJs.”
Everything you need under one roof
Returning to the topic of diversification, Gaona shared how the ability to provide a whole suite of services under one roof is ingrained in his vision of what Comlux is.
“So, we are not a broker or an operator. We are not just doing trading. We are not just a completion center doing cabin fittings and MRO,” he said. “We are all of these things together. We are unique.”
He added: “I don’t know if you’re aware, but Comlux is the contraction of two words: comfort and luxury. This is how the name Comlux was created, not by me, but by the founders of the company 21 years ago, and it has never been changed because we believe in what we are trying to do: deliver a luxury product that is comfortable.”
But how defensible is this competitive position? And aren’t competitors trying to do the same thing?
“Well, first of all, it takes time,” Gaona said. “You cannot build this immediately. You need time to build up an organization such as ours. Second, it takes money; you have to invest. And when I say you have to invest, I don’t mean just renting a hangar or buying some tools. You need people who are able to do this job.
“In aviation, and perhaps even more in private aviation, it is very difficult to build up a team of top professionals and then find enough business to keep them busy, working full time. Some MROs, for example, are trying to get involved in cabin modifications, but they don’t have the sort of skills we have in our shop.”
He continued: “If you come to Indianapolis, we can modify anything. To do that, you need to invest in a huge facility, we have 132,000 square feet. It’s big. On top of that, we have an extremely good engineering team. You need engineering as well because as soon as you touch an aircraft, unless you do something which is standard according to the MPD [Maintenance Planning Data] manual, or you need to do an STC [Supplemental Type Certificate] or a Minor Mod [alterations of the original design that require regulator’s approval – ed. note].”
At this point in the conversation, Gaona mentioned one of the flagship projects Comlux has been involved in: the development of the Airbus ACJ TwoTwenty, the executive version of the A220 airliner. This is a rather complex project for which Comlux has managed to gain certification from two major aviation regulators, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States.
“There is no compromise. It’s either you have safety, or they don’t approve your modification,” he explained. “So, to be able to do this, you need to have a Design Organization within the company, which we have. It’s a team of seven or eight people who are just doing certification work. These people are difficult to find in the market. If you do just one aircraft a year, it’s not interesting to have it in-house. So, it’s a combination of time, of finding the right people at the right time, and investing.”
Once again, Gaona highlighted how know-how and experience is essential for this type of completion project.
“I remember how, years ago, I saw an A319 aircraft with a galley at the back that, when the door was closed, the toboggan slide did not allow the galley to open. This happened because it had not been designed by people who knew how it worked,” he said. “There are these kinds of mistakes. For example, when we do a cabin interior, the first thing we check is the center of gravity of the cabin. You have to be able to do weight evaluation and calculate the center of gravity. Once we have that, we give it to our pilots who make sure that you are not flying with dummy weight in the cabin. I know of a case in which one of our competitors made that mistake, and the client is suffering forever.”
He added: “So, if you don’t have this expertise, like we have in our team, you can make mistakes, which cost a lot of money.”
The art of selling big jets
If technical expertise is a necessary condition, what about the commercial side? What sort of skills are required to sell large executive aircraft to a highly sophisticated and demanding clientele?
“As you know, I headed the ACJ division at Airbus when it was created. I was appointed to sell aircraft. And I remember how I was told to try to sell 30 planes in 10 years,” Gaona explained. “After eight years, we had sold 120 planes. So, I can say, without being humble, that I know a bit about selling aircraft.
“So, when I joined Comlux, I came with all my experience, and then three friends that used to work with me joined me as well and we built up the new organization,” he continued. “Severine, the current EVP Commercial Operations at Comlux, who was the head of marketing at Airbus joined us, too. We then expanded tremendously because we are very good at selling aircraft and at buying them as well.”
Gaona also explained how it is often more difficult to sell a second-hand aircraft than a new one.
“When an aircraft comes from the factory, it is perfect. You know it will be good because it’s new. You don’t have corrosion; you don’t have any wrong equipment or problems with the engines,” he explained. “When you buy second hand, though, even if the aircraft is only two or three years old, you need to go through all the records of the life of that plane and, if you don’t have very good engineers in your team, you cannot make the proper assessment of its status.”
“If you sell this aircraft and, after delivery, your customer finds a problem that you have not seen during the inspection, you face trouble,” he added.
One of Comlux’s strong points, according to Gaona, is that when buying or selling second-hand aircraft, it is always the firm’s own airline-experienced engineering and maintenance team that will perform a thorough inspection.
“We will do a deep review of the manuals. We will know exactly what the status is and will be transparent with the client,” he said. “Then, if the aircraft is purchased and the client wants to change the interior, I am going to send it to our completion center in the US and we, as experts, will say what’s possible and what’s not possible and how much it is going to cost.”
“So, the client has one entity who can provide all these services. This is what I call the ‘one-stop shop’. We will always find the right expert,” he added. “We know exactly what the status of each aircraft is. If we find an aircraft that has the right price tag, but we know it will have to go through a C-check soon and that’s going to cost the customer four or five million extra, we can raise this point up with the customer, so that we can factor this in before taking a decision.”
“You can only provide this type of personalized advice if you have all the competencies under the same roof,” he continued. “And when the aircraft enters service, we can provide our pilots, our crew. Even if the customer already has a crew, we can provide a replacement crew from our pool when needed and they don’t need to search for a new one themselves.”
Gaona also explained how Comlux helps some of its customers monetize ownership of their aircraft, much like Airbnb.
“My experience is that when customers acquire their first plane, they use it even to go to buy bread. They always find a reason to fly the plane! But when they have been operating the plane for some time and they start getting monthly bills, they usually ask ‘How can I reduce my cost?’, and we tell them, ‘Well, the way to reduce your cost is to give access to your aircraft to others on a case by case basis’. If the customer agrees, we then let them know every time the opportunity arises to rent it out and, this way, they can start generating income.”
“This is a smart way a private jet owner can reduce the cost of operation,” Gaona added. “It doesn’t cover all the costs, but it can help.”
Comlux is one of the few operators in the world focused on the largest segment of executive jets. When asked about how this market differs from that of smaller business jets, Gaona returned to the firm’s A220 ACJ TwoTwenty flagship project.
The TwoTwenty: creating a new executive aircraft category
“ACJs and BBJs are bigger than other executive aircraft and therefore they are the more expensive and sold in much smaller numbers. This is why the TwoTwenty is such a great opportunity because this aircraft costs more or less the same as a purpose-built business jet and its operation costs are about the same but with a much larger cabin,” he explained. “So, we have started to attract clients that were used to buying, for example, Gulfstream or Bombardier, and they are now buying TwoTwenties. It’s not that many because we don’t have too many to sell but the trend is that we can really expand on this one.”
Next, Gaona continued to explain the differences between the market for executive airliner versions and purpose-designed business jets.
“The second difference is that Airbus and Boeing aircraft have been originally designed for the airlines, which are flying them three to four thousand hours per year, while a private operator may fly just 300 hours per year. So, the lifetime of an ACJ or BBJ is much longer,” he said. “You have ACJs that are 10 years old, and they have maybe three to five thousand hours. On an airline that would be just 18 months of utilization. So, the first generation of BBJs and ACJs are regularly resold by their first owners and the new ones are going to invest maybe five to 10 million to upgrade the cabin completely because the life of the aircraft is still long, and they will still be flying essentially a new plane.”
“The third point is the price,” he added. “You can have an Embraer Legacy for $25 million but you have to spend $110 or 120 million for an A320. So, not everybody can buy that. These are two different markets.”
Gaona returned to the importance of specialized skills and experience in this special market.
“We are the specialists in this market and, as I said, we help clients buy. This means that after advising a client on which aircraft he should buy next, I can buy the plane, and I will negotiate the best contract for them and the best customer support conditions,” he said. “The OEM is also happy because it knows we are professionals and whatever happens to the client, we will not walk away from the deal. They know they are dealing with a professional organization.”
“If I was selling just one aircraft, then I would have to go to the market, do a tender for the cabin and, if I don’t have specialists, I may not be buying at the right price,” Gaona continued. “I have the specialists because I have a company that does just this. So that’s why I built this model of find, sell, outfit, fly, sell, outfit, fly and always keep the client happy. This last point is very important to me.”
When it comes to geographical diversification, Comlux is currently investing heavily in the Middle East. The company has already established a significant presence in the region, particularly in Dubai, where its charter sales team are based. This foothold will be expanded with the opening of a new facility at Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC).
“The reason we are in the Middle East is because we have a lot of clients in the region, and we are helping with their operations as well,” Gaona explained. “And then, if they want to replace a battery, for example, we cannot tell them to fly all the way to the US. So now we can say, ‘come here, and we will do that very quickly’. We can put three or four A220s inside the new facility, or two A321s or two or three BBJs, plus all the small aircraft around.”
Cabin interiors also have a strong aesthetic component. So, how does Comlux’s own in-house cabin design work resemble that of other luxury fashion houses?
“At our facility in the US, we have a team which is just doing research and development, and they are constantly coming up with new ideas and solutions. It’s not the same as making a watch, of course, but we work on something that flies high and fast,” Gaona explained, emphasizing the high-tech component of today’s cabin interiors work.
“For example, right now we are developing a new satellite communication system, which we will install on our aircraft. I remember how, at the beginning of the 2000s, you could not have Wi-Fi onboard which was able to transmit data because you could not even talk on the phone, the speed was too slow,” he said. “Today, you can watch a Formula One Grand Prix on TV during your flight. That technology did not exist just a few years ago and, in the future, it will probably be superseded by something new, faster, and less expensive.”
Gaona also explained how many of those elements are not directly visible to the client, such new materials, which are lighter, more resistant and prevent corrosion. The A220, for example, has more composites and less metal than either the ACJs or BBJs of the past.
“It is lighter and less exposed to corrosion, which also extends the life of the plane,” he said. “And when you look at the fuel consumption, the A220 is on the same level as much smaller private jets. So, we are greener because we are saving 30 to 40% of fuel. And more economic, too since fuel represents 40% of the cost of operations.”
“The point is, if you have a smaller business jet, let’s say a [Bombardier] Global or a Gulfstream, and you want to fly long range with more than five or six passengers, I can tell you that the comfort on board is less than what you would get on business class because the cabins are small,” Gaona said before laying out the business case for the TwoTwenty’s development.
He continued: “Aircraft owners are flying maybe 50% of the time with three or four people onboard and that’s okay but the day they want to fly eight or 10, the aircraft becomes too small. So, I have some clients who have two aircraft, one for when they fly a large group and family and so on, and one for other occasions. But not everybody can afford that. So, if the cost of operations is low enough, which is the case with the TwoTwenty, you may have people thinking it’s better to take something in between the A320 ACJ or 737 BBJ and the Global and Gulfstream, and then have one aircraft which can fulfill the two missions.”
“This is why I’m a strong believer in the TwoTwenty,” he added, “because I believe that it is in the two segments, and it’s a new offering. Of course, there will always be people who have been buying, for example, Dassault or Bombardier or Gulfstream, and they will keep buying it all their life and they will never change. But you have more and more ultra-high net worth people, who are 40 or 50 years old, who are starting to have grown-up children and need to travel from time to time with everybody. And if they manage a corporation, when they go to meetings, they may take four or five people on the smaller private jet, and the others must go on an airline. But now they can take everybody.”
Comlux delivered the first A220 TwoTwenty to Dubai-based luxury hospitality group FIVE in May 2023 and the second to an undisclosed client (although it is operated by Comlux) a few months later. At the time of the interview, two more TwoTwenty aircraft were undergoing the final stages of completion and set to be delivered.
Gaona has nothing but praise for this aircraft type.
“We have already sold six TwoTwenties that we bought from Airbus and resold. I think it’s working very well. The buyers are very happy, I think, with their decision,” he said. “The A220 works extremely well for airlines and the ACJ TwoTwenty comes from the same production line, so we need more [production] slots. This is a message I passed to the CEO of Airbus Canada. I said, ‘Give us more aircraft. We’ll sell more planes!’ It’s honestly a very good aircraft, well beyond what I thought. And I’m very, very happy.”
When asked about his favorite aircraft type, Gaona did not hesitate to provide an answer.
“Today, I will take TwoTwenty, no doubt,” he said. “And it’s not because I’m selling it. If I have to travel for just one hour, I may charter a smaller plane. But if you have a long-range mission, there is no doubt that this is the plane that you should take. It’s the perfect one.”