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Flying south in his personal propeller-driven plane from Minneapolis to Des Moines, Nick Fancher takes care of business in both cities for a business he loves, JetChoice LLC. The private jet service, which he says caters “80 percent to corporations and 20 percent to wealthy individuals,” recently opened a Central Iowa facility in the Elliott Aviation hangar at Des Moines International Airport.

Similar to a country club, JetChoice has members who “pay a monthly fee if they fly or not, and then pay an hourly flight time (fee) for every hour they occupy the jet,” said Fancher, director of business development for JetChoice’s Des Moines and Twin Cities operations. “It’s like a corporate flight department but on a shared-cost basis.”

Fancher said JetChoice targets a very narrow niche market, positioning his fingers a centimeter apart, of people who have high demands on their time.

“The common thread between our clients are people who have a lot of demand on their time and have the need to have guaranteed access to a jet,” he said. “We have members who say they are home 25 nights more because of JetChoice.”

However, the niche extends well beyond people with demanding schedules and reaches a little deeper into the personal preferences of each individual member.

Boutique-level service

“Every flight is tailored to each individual member,” Fancher said. “If there are certain beverages, magazines, newspapers (that they want), those will be there.”

Fancher said some clients have very specific requests, such as one member who requests a diet root beer and a Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll for every flight, even though the latter only gets eaten about 60 percent of the time. Other requests, he said, are fairly standard, such as ensuring that a favorite wine is on board during flight, or catering in a meal from the member’s favorite restaurant to be served while in flight.

Fancher also said JetChoice only does business with certain caterers for food that is served aboard the plane, noting every brand the company serves directly reflects the branding image of JetChoice.

“This is another level of service, a boutique level,” he said.

However, the boutique-level service doesn’t stop at the Salted Nut Roll or the hand-selected caterers. When members arrive at the hangar, the captain of the flight greets them at their vehicle, grabs their bags and escorts them inside the hangar, which has been constructed to include a clubhouse.

“It’s usually six minutes from the time they arrive to when they take off,” Fancher said. “Although some members’ guests arrive early, forgetting they don’t have to deal with security and things like that.”

When this happens, Fancher said, members’ guests sit in the lounge area of the clubhouse or utilize the private office space. Some members, however, have used JetChoice facilities for different purposes such as confidential merger-and-acquisition meetings in the clubhouse’s conference room.

A member’s perspective

However, some members use JetChoice for purposes other than work, taking advantage of being in the 20 percent of clients categorized as “wealthy individuals.”

For instance, local real estate magnate Bill Knapp headed off to the vice presidential debate in St. Louis last week, and then planned to zip down to Florida before making his way over to Aspen simply for leisure.

“Commercial flying is kind of a hassle anymore,” Knapp said, claiming he’s used JetChoice since its inception in Des Moines five years ago. “You don’t have the hassle and you can go when you want to go, and we can take people with us,” he said, noting that it “costs a little more to go private.”

But this cost is worth it to Knapp, who said he doesn’t use any other air service, except when flying overseas.

“I’ll use it as long as I can afford it,” he said. “I think if you can afford it in your business or for pleasure, then it certainly makes sense.”

Knapp said he uses the service mostly for personal use, such as family vacations and leisure trips – noting Santa Barbara, Phoenix, Chicago and Florida as his most frequent destinations – and only uses it for business occasionally.

“You can put anything in your back yard in just a few hours,” he said, explaining that he only needs to let JetChoice know eight hours in advance of when he wants to depart and what his destination will be. He can also tell the company what size of plane he wants.

“If we want a small plane, we can have it,” he said. “If we want a large plane, we can do it.”

And when asked whether he cared if people knew he was a member of an elite private jet service, he said with a chuckle: “I’m not uncomfortable with that. … I don’t care much about status. That is probably the least of my concerns.”

But after citing his lack of concerns, he did note one, while still chuckling: “If the economy keeps going they way it is, a couple of us might not be able to afford it anymore.”

The fleet

JetChoice has a total fleet of 12 aircraft that operate out of five permanent facilities in Des Moines, the Twin Cities, Phoenix, Aspen and Houston, and has plans to extend its operations to New York and San Jose.

JetChoice has been serving the Des Moines area for the past five years, but just opened its permanent location here a few months ago. Currently, the company is leasing about 15,000 square feet,or one-third of the Elliott hangar at Des Moines International Airport, with 3,000 square feet of that space dedicated to the clubhouse. Fancher said that once the company acquires more members here, it will look to expand its Des Moines facility to accommodate more jets.

As of right now, Fancher said the company is flying approximately 800 hours annually for its 10 Des Moines members.

Every aircraft in the fleet is assigned five pilots who work a six days on, eight days off schedule, which Fancher called a good schedule for a pilot. The crew consists of 58 captain-ranked pilots, who boast an average of 16 years of experience and 9,000 hours of flight time each.

Fancher said each pilot attends two rigorous Federal Aviation Administration seminars annually, which cost the company between $15,000 to $20,000 per pilot. These seminars put the pilots in simulated emergency situations that they would not be able to train for in flight.

And though the training can accumulate into a hefty bill for JetChoice, Fancher said, “the cost of safety is very high in this business,” and with five years of accident-free operations, safety is not something the company will take a chance on.