Thrive debuts fractional Corporate Jet Investor

Curtis Edenfield can't stand two things: a delayed flight and an empty seat. It is an operational discipline he picked up during his time at Southwest Airlines. 'I've been around aviation my whole life,' he tells us. 'My dad was a pilot. My mom was a flight attendant.' After Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where his brother trained to fly and Edenfield 'went the corporate side of aviation', he landed at Southwest. After six years at the airline, Edenfield co-founded Thrive Aviation with his brother. He is now taking the company into fractional ownership, backed by a strategic partnership with HondaJet. It is not hard to see Southwest's fingerprints on the company Edenfield built. Thrive's founding principle, he says, is the same one he learned on the ramp while working for the airline. 'We always say our goal is to maximise revenue per day. Just like how on a Southwest plane, you're never going to get the empty seat back that departs 8am Vegas to Dallas… if we have a healthy airplane and duty time with crew, we're never going to get today back the ability to sell and generate revenue there.' Eight years on from founding, Thrive has added aircraft management, a retail jet card and recently its own Part 145 MRO. Fractional is the newest branch, and it grew out of owners asking Thrive to manage their aircraft after positive charter experiences. It was also a result of a multi-year courtship with Honda Aircraft Company. 'Honda were looking for an operator that had a very good brand and an operator that knew how to optimise and fly airplanes,' Edenfield tells us. It created a new subsidiary, Arulian Air, to launch the programme with Thrive as the operator. The launch pairing is a HondaJet HA-420 and a Bombardier Challenger 3500. A light jet and a super-mid. 'The HondaJet is perfect for those Los Angeles runs from Southern California up to Northern California,' Edenfield says, while the Challenger 3500 gives 'easy coast-to-coast capabilities as the most popular aircraft in the industry.' Thrive's existing charter fleet of about 30 aircraft, which includes G450s, a G600, Longitudes and Sovereigns, sit behind the program as backup. Edenfield is clear the two launch types, HA-420 and Challenger 3500, are a starting point, not the only types they will deal with. 'Whatever the demand requires for the fractional, we will go and get those airplanes in conjunction with Arulian,' he tells us. On the question of whether an OEM-backed subsidiary buying another manufacturer's jets creates any awkwardness, Edenfield says: 'Bombardier doesn't make light jets. Arulian is sourcing and acquiring the airplanes. Thrive is the operator.' The acquisitions will sit entirely on Arulian's side of the ledger. When a fractional share sells, ownership transfers to the buyer, then a separate agreement kicks in with Thrive Aviation getting the 'management fee, all that good stuff with that you see in any sort of traditional fractional programme'. Arulian has also taken an undisclosed minority stake directly in Thrive. Edenfield says growth, for now, will stay regional before it goes national, with more detail promised later this year at the NBAA convention. 'The smart way to do this, so you don't get ahead of your skis, is to look at this at a regional basis,' Edenfield says. Edenfield is expecting six to 10 new aircraft a year for the programme. 'Roughly two to four of the super-mids … and four to six HondaJets, based on demand,' he says. For Edenfield, though, the larger ambition goes beyond fleet growth. 'I want to build something that withstands my lifetime, I want to build something that I'm proud of, and I want to build something with people that I like working with.' Subscribe to our free newsletter For more opinions from Corporate Jet Investor, subscribe to our One Minute Week newsletter. Subscribe here