Cost-effective operations

Atlo, Inc., runs a cost-effective flight department with DOCs of $2000 an hour on the Gulfstream, $800 on the Learjet 24B and about $450 on the Tebuan including all maintenance wages, landing fees, and hourly costs. Last year the corporate equipment flew 450 hours – 270 hours on the Gulfstream, 125 hours on the Lear, and 55 hours on the Tebuan – up a total of 100 hours over the previous year.

“We've run a tight operation,” says Damm. “Outside maintenance facilities are used sparingly and we negotiate parts purchases. Sean shops fuel – our average fuel cost around the country is $1.50 a gallon, and we try to buy the right aircraft to begin with.”

Atlo uses the services of Flight-Safety and SimuFlite for recurrent training. Travolta takes flying very seriously and professionally and often uses vacation time to do his training, alternating between Lear and Gulfstream recurrent work each year.

Down at the Spruce Creek hangar, Damm and his supporting staff are relatively self-sufficient in maintaining all three aircraft.

When it's needed, outside work has been accomplished at Jet Aviation at WPB (West Palm Beach, FL), Jet Center at VNY (Van Nuys, CA), Million Air at TEB, Gulfstream at SAV (Savannah, GA) and KC Aviation at DAL.

Damm takes care of most Lear inspections and maintenance in-house bringing the 13,000-lb-MTOW twinjet in every six months to tighten it up and check that everything's running perfectly. The 8000-lb-TOW Tebuan was recently upgraded in-house with a Bendix/King stack GPS, stereo system, full IFR and an autopilot and it's expected to be airborne about 100 hours over the next year.