Angel Flight Southeast Launches New Website
Chris met Steve Purello, the Executive Director of Angel Flight Southeast, at the NBAA Regional show in Orlando back in February. Steve was there as an exhibitor with his company, First Class Aerospace. We noticed their website was in need of a makeover, so we stepped up. Angel Flight Southeast launches new website donated by us and built by our friends at Aviation Marketing Experts.
When Steve saw the new website he said, “The site looks awesome! That’s great. It is so detailed and perfect”.
Additionally, we have also decided to help them with organizing a series of events in South Florida as well. Since, that’s what we do, too.
As it turns out they had been doing gala events for many years but stopped a couple of years back. Now we’re going to help bring those back and have selected Fort Lauderdale for the first event.
Aviation Marketing Experts also helped us with another website, to announce regional events for select Angel Flight chapters.
The new events site is AngelFlightEvents.com. It will help promote events and it’s all being donated.
Currently we’re promoting:
- Angel Flight Southeast
- Angel Flight Northeast
- Angel Flight West
- More to come..
Any Angel Flight chapter who wants an event promoted can contact us at Events@AircraftGuys.com.
The cool part is we already have some sponsors who have committed to the South Florida gala events. And these are new sponsors, we haven’t even contacted any of the previous sponsors as of today. I’m sure they’ll all be back to support this great charity.
As everyone knows, Chris and Jorge are always looking for fun and cool aviation stories but giving back is a big part of that too ! We look forward to organizing lots of successful events for Angel Flight Southeast in the coming months and years.
And if you’re looking to do events, want an awesome website or some marketing ideas that will exceed your expectations, contact me at: Alicia@AircraftGuys.com. or call us at: 786-949-4141
Angel Flight Southeast Launches New Website
South Florida Exclusive Private Jet Events Announced
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The Aircraft Guys are rolling out a series of new events to be held at the Miami Opa-Locka Executive Airport, Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport and Boca Raton Airport. These South Florida Exclusive Private Jets Events announced officially on April 15th.
According to Aircraft Guys, Jorge Cappel and Chris Pou: “We have planned and helped other aviation companies do events, so this was a natural progression for us to be a promoter. These events are going to be completely different than the typical hangar events or trade shows.”
Typically, an airport hangar event is for a private celebration function or a charity cause. The Aircraft Guys Events are hosted by a private aircraft direct carrier, management company or FBO. The purpose is to promote the individual host company.
And aviation industry trade shows, on the other hand, usually have seminars, guest speakers and vendor exhibitors. The other issue is industry trade shows generally do not allow exotic car manufacturers, travel, lifestyle, real estate, hospitality and even beverage companies as exhibitors.
Aircraft Guys Commercial Events are invitation only, to select individuals, and are limited to just a handful of co-sponsors who can be on display. We do not approve all invitations. Only a very high-end demographic will be in attendance. Events are usually a maximum of 300 attendees.
Aircraft Guys will also be organizing a series of charity events. The first event will be in November for Angel Flight Southeast, already announced on their website. This will be a gala event with a ticket fee for attendees.
The first question a potential host, sponsor or charity may ask is how well does this work ?
What we will share, without the names of the specific events, is the following:
Results of several private aviation events over the past two years (all in Florida):
- Private Jet company sold a $2.5 million fractional ownership at the event
- LSV Moke sold 7 vehicles at the event
- Exotic car manufacturer had 2 leads result in $700,000 in sales.
- Real Estate Broker had 3 leads pan out into over $7 million in home sales.
- and more..
And if you’re wondering who the Aircraft Guys are, and what do they know about aviation events ?
The Aircraft Guys started as kind of an undercover boss blog as part of the private jet charter broker, InstaJet Charters, who handles the financial part of the events.
The Aircraft Guys is an officially approved news agency for the NBAA, the largest and oldest aviation association in the U.S. We are granted press credentials for every event. Only a select few companies get these passes.
We are also affiliated with the oldest aviation marketing agency in the U.S. (45 years), Aviation Marketing Experts. They have won over 150 film and video awards for their work in aviation marketing. And their parent company, Blue Island Digital, works with some of the largest corporations in the world, including hospitality giants, Hilton and Marriott.
Check out the following links:
See: https://aviation.blueislanddigital.com
See: https://aviation.blueislanddigital.com/video-production/
See client list: https://blueislanddigital.com/
We are also the authors of the Aviation Marketing Experts free weekly newsletter that is read by over 30,000 aviation professionals. It accepts no advertising or sponsorships, so it is well respected for not being biased.
Given our work with so many aspects of the aviation, private jet and hospitality industries, we are uniquely qualified to create this niche event business.
And we are experts at promoting these events for the host and co-sponsors. We’ve been marketing aviation companies for over 45 years.
Contact us at events@aircraftguys.com to become a co-sponsor or be added to the ticket list.
South Florida Exclusive Private Jet Events Announced
2025 State Of The Private Jet Charter Industry (Part 1)
Over the past month we have been reaching out to charter, management and MRO companies. We decided to pick companies who subscribe to the free weekly Aviation Marketing Experts newsletter that is read by over 25,000 people. This is our 2025 state of the private jet charter industry Part 1.
It started with us just calling to thank people for reading the newsletter. But as we talked to some people, they were willing to talk more about their businesses.
For the Aircraft Guys stories, Jorge and Chris usually just cold call on companies in person, mostly in Florida. This time the team decided to just cold call on the phone. Generally, if we were able to get someone to the phone they usually talked for a while. If we left messages, they seemed for the most part to never return our calls.
We decided to do this as a multi part series since there are so many stories to tell and we’re still talking to people.
We begin locally in Florida. None of these are in any chronological order, just what we decided to write about for this first article.
Here are the first 3 for our series:
With our travels all over Florida somehow, we never came across this company despite it being at both the Opa-Locka and Fort Lauderdale Executive airports. The company is Presidential Aviation. And this is not a charter broker but a full Part 135 operator with a bunch of aircraft.
Jorge spoke with Yoharner Echemendia, who is the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Charter Operations. First off, he was amazed that we had not heard of them as we have been in the aviation marketing business for 45 years and they have been around for quite a while as well.
His first comment was, “I need to fire my marketing people”.
Different than quite a few Part 135 operators we spoke to, their charter business is mostly wholesale. They operate a fairly large fleet of aircraft ranging from prop to heavy jets. We definitely don’t see a lot of that either. Their aircraft are located in hangar space in FL, CA, PA NC and OH. The other surprising part was they return their flights to base, and don’t float aircraft.
Back to their marketing, he said his Google Ads were performing well. And like many other companies, they rely on word of mouth. He also said that they had never done any hangar events to promote their own business. Jorge explained it was something that we have actually helped companies do events with great success.
Here again, we’re surprised how many companies are not using some really effective marketing tools.
Now onto Arizona and PrismJet. This is a new company established in 2024. We spoke to the Sales Manager, who asked us not to use his name. He said that they are running at capacity.
This is a company who does aircraft management and maintenance. They are a Part 135 operator but utilize the excess capacity of the managed aircraft as their charter fleet. They too, do not float aircraft. Here that makes sense, since these are privately owned aircraft where the owners would not want their aircraft gone for long periods of time. They operate several Challengers and Learjets.
Now on to Chicago and DuPage Aerospace. We spoke with John Bullock, Vice President. They are a Part 135 operator with a fleet of Gulfstreams and Hawkers. Again, this is a well established company with a great track record.
Here different than above, their business is almost 100% retail, relying almost exclusively on word of mouth. He acknowledged that getting new customers outside of word of mouth was a big challenge. And when comparing sales of January 2024 to January 2025 they were about the same.
Another marketing trick that a lot of these companies have not learned is how to get their message directly to the decision makers instead of some administrative assistant. He too, acknowledged that was another problem.
He was quite candid about another challenge and that was keeping good pilots. First off, there is a bad perception of Chicago as an unsafe city. He also said that most of his experienced pilots were over 65. That of course is due to the age restrictions on commercial airline pilots. As far as training young new pilots, he said, the training costs about $30,000 each. However, once they usually get enough experience, they move to commercial airlines.
The takeaway from two of these stories is how they are not trying any new innovative marketing. It seems almost bizarre as the weekly free newsletter they subscribe to talks about all of these new techniques and the success stories. A head scratcher for sure. There’s a signup form on our homepage.
That’s it for Part 1. This was fun !
If you’re interested in chatting, give us a call at 786-949-4141 or email us at: aircraftguys@gmail.com
2025 State Of The Private Jet Charter Industry (Part 1)
Our Visit To The 2025 NBAA Orlando Regional Forum
Chris and I attended another NBAA event held on February 26th. This time our visit to the 2025 NBAA Orlando Regional Forum had several surprises. As usual we were granted Press credentials by the NBAA. The show was held in 2 hangars at the Orlando Executive Airport (ORL).
First off, we were thinking that this forum would not be as large as the one we attended at the Opa-Locka Executive Airport (OPF) in Miami. This actually had more exhibitors and definitely more aircraft on display.
Gulfstream G700 2025 NBAA Orlando Forum
It was exciting to see Gulfstream with a G500, but the big surprise was that a brand new G700 that was also on display with the word ‘Experimental’ painted outside below the cockpit window.
The story that was circulating was that Gulfstream had not been bringing aircraft to shows due to some damage that occurred at a prior event. We will say security was tight at this show. Plenty of law enforcement presence.
Although we got to tour inside the G700, photography was not permitted. It looked like it was ready to take off with sharply dressed flight attendants onboard and even pilots in the cockpit. Access was restricted most of the day as potential buyers were granted private showings.
Another surprise was the number of exhibitors who were providers of software. From flight tracking, real time pilot performance, accounting, maintenance tracking and compliance record keeping. Also, several airports had booths. Lots to see.
As expected, the big FBOs and avionics companies were there.
Some of the exhibitors who we had the chance to talk to for bit were standouts:
- First Class Aerospace (aircraft interiors and painting)
- RIM Enterprises (used aircraft parts)
- Morristown Airport
- Universal Avionics (aftermarket avionics for Hawker and Falcon)
- GGT Worldwise (ground transportation and security)
- Avionica
First Class Aerospace uses AI to design interiors and has won national painting awards for 4 years running.
Morristown Airport in New Jersey was promoting themselves as an alternative to Teterboro, which can get busy for New York City private flyers. Not to mention lots of space for hangars.
The lunch was great, lots of choices of gourmet sandwiches, salads and even desserts. Another great job by Silver Lining Catering of Pompano Beach, Florida. They’re also known for inflight catering as well. Chris and I got a chance to go behind the scenes into the kitchen and talk to one of the owners.
All in all, a great show. We got there right at the opening and stayed till 30 minutes before closing. Great weather, sunny and mid 70s.
On to the next adventure. If you have a story you want to tell. Contact us at aircraftguys@gmail.com
And we work with the oldest and most award winning aviation marketing agency in the U.S. so can help you grow too !
Our Visit To The 2025 NBAA Orlando Regional Forum
