In 2003 the story was....we need a considerable size of our fleet before making money....2004 the same, 2005, 2006 small profit, 2007 bigger profit.
I try to explain where it goes wrong. Not too much, they do not pay me near enough to get this for free....
Where shall I start:
1. First off all the different types we fly, way too much and a nightmare to get the right type to the rightfull customer. Upgrades and long ferries happen a lot. Both costing money.
2. With the right size of the fleet the ferry amount should go down. Nope doesn't happen for the last 5 years, still around 35% to 40% empty sectors. Cost a lot of money.
3. The peak capacity, why would you as customer spent a ****load of money to hear in busy periods that your plane is not available. so nj is hiring other jets from other operators, they need 2% capacity from the outside. This capacity is difficult to get cheaply. Maybe the first year, but the next that operator realizes he/she can make a lot more money than selling his capacity to netjets, cause nj is only needing them in peak hours when EVERYBODY can make money. So sell off are expensive, and driving the selloff number down is near inpossible (i have some ideas, but as said not paid near enough ;-)
4. Oilprices go up ($100,- now and 130 at the end of the year), and competition gets cheaper (air taxis and vlj's), so margin goes down.
5. The selling of the shares (16) per aircraft is the big moneymaker, nj buys 50 aircraft at once and gets aprox 25% discount. But the owners pay the full monty, and this process is continued every 5 years. Now since 2002 we had an explosion off cheaper clients who bought block hour (25 or 50 hr) cards. They had to do this because sales was slowing. Now the proportion of real owners and cardholders is not normal anymore. And this disposition gets worse as sales are slowing again!
The solutions, some are very simple but Santulli and his arrogance do not see them. (btw his brother is involved in buying the aircraft, look it up, then you understand some deals for aircraft which shouldn't belong to the best of the best fleet.....)
Anyway, 2006 and 2007, many airlines made a lot of money. 2008 and 09 will be different. Some will not survive (the legacy carriers will however, and af is now hiring experienced 320 people, see last flight international) but netjets europe will have 2 difficult years.
Hope this helps, still do not forget the pension, the sickness policy, the way they treat management, the 7 to 10 years before you touch a nice aircraft, the savings on hotels/travel, and the fact that 80% of the pilots serve on small or midsize fleets....