Traffic taking a turn for the worse is something that Filipinos,

especially those in the metro, have to deal with everyday.

With traffic jams taking away precious time
and resulting in many lost opportunities,
don’t you just wish that you can cut
hours-long travel to just a few minutes?
If only there is a way to just fly over this urban gridlock.
Well, flying over Metro Manila traffic is actually possible!
There’s one company that wants to make sure
you get to travel without the hassle.
I’m RJ Ledesma and our Bright Idea is... Airtaxi.ph
As traffic in the metro continues to worsen,
traveling by helicopter has become an option
for people who don't mind the price tag
And for airtaxi.ph – they make sure that every
centavo is worth the ride, and the time!
Their Executive Vice President Paj Rodriguez
gives us the lowdown on this private air travel.
Tell me a bit more first about Airtaxi.
I know that you are part of the Asian Aerospace Group.
Is that right?
Asian Aerospace is basically the whole company.
It does aircraft sales, aircraft charters, aircraft maintenance, FBO,
logistics, support, basically everything to do with aviation, this does.
So what we’re focusing now is the Airtaxi.ph
which is the charter leg or the charter part of this whole company,
which is flying people back and forth, flying cargo,
flying special missions, everything.
You’ve got a young boss at the helm
but it’s not a young company.
It was established in 1996.
What was the opportunity that led them
to create a sort of chartered air taxi?
All right, in 1996, we started off with just two helicopters.
The business is what you see now.
We charter passengers, we do services, we maintain aircraft,
we sell aircraft, everything.
It’s just on a smaller scale, it’s just starting up.
From 1996 to the present, land travel just got more and more daunting.
In effect, the demand for fast and reliable chartered flights
started to grow, allowing Airtaxi.ph to soar to new heights.
We offer shorter trips, we offer experiences,
we offer basically everything as a solution to everyone.
Because our motto here is we are the solution team.
When you’re stuck in traffic, we’re the solution.
If you’re a tourist, you need to get away for a while,
you only have two days to get away, we are the solution.
When the business started off in 1996,
who were your initial set of clients because I’m guessing traffic
wasn’t as bad as it was back then.
So, were they government? Were they private sector?
We had all sorts of customers and clients so traffic
was not the only issue back then.
So, back then we didn’t have SLEX, we didn’t have NLEX,
we didn’t have SCTEX. So if you need to get to Clark,
Pangasinan, down to Batangas, it was more than an hour car ride.
It would take maybe three hours, four hours, even half the day sometimes.
I remember back then, going to Baguio was like 7 hours to 8 hours by car.
That’s right.
Now, you have the luxury of taking the highway,
which shrinks it down to 5 hours.
Now, if you use the helicopter, it’s just really short,
just about a little more than an hour. So for us,
our customers before are still our customers now.
Regardless if there’s SCTEX now, NLEX or if there’s traffic,
for them, it’s important to fly to get where they need to be at the right time.
Are the type of clients you’re getting, are these more for business or leisure?
Oh, we get a great mix. So, we get business, leisure, and services.
Example, for businesses, we have people bringing in their guests,
bringing in investors, bringing in basically their team
for a team-building or something like that. That’s one.
Next is for leisure, we have tourists, we have VIPs
who just want to go out, wanna go eat in a restaurant
somewhere far away and come back on the same day, and we have services.
We have special services like medical evacuations, so if in case
you fall somewhere and you break your arm, you need to get back,
we can evacuate you right away by helicopter or via plane,
or if you have to bring in cargo, a large cargo or special cargo,
we can do that as well.
I see. Now, when was that point when you were
doing the business when you said, Ah, it’s going to work out.
When we got our new aircraft, we got the Pilatus PC-12s,
these are our Turboprop planes.
We’ll see one later when we go down.
Wow, okay.
It’s very efficient. Cost-effective. So that’s one thing.
We love that very much, because of course when you fly people,
it’s nice to fly in a very fancy jet, which we also have, but
sometimes people just need to get from place to place at a certain time.
With the entry of such cost-effective aircraft,
Airtaxi.ph was able to make chartered flights
more affordable and more accessible.
This did wonders for their company
and expanded their client base exponentially.
We started getting bookings more regularly.
Like if before, I talk to somebody and say,
Hey, I’m this guy, I’ll charge you P500,000,
they’ll turn around and walk away, I’ll never see them again.
But ever since we got this one,
Hey, I’ll charge you this, it’s like, Okay, I’ll sign up, I’ll do this.
It got a lot simpler.
Great. So give me a better idea.
Day to day, how many flights take off
and how many planes do you guys have?
We have 27 aircraft: jets and helicopters
nationwide so it’s all over the country.
It’s in Manila, Clark, Cebu, Boracay, Davao,
Puerto Princesa, and Bohol.
Now, we have over 6-7,000 flights a year.
We’re growing more, obviously, with an expanding fleet.
So it looks like business is taking off as much as you want.
So Paj, I’m going to find out the secret sauce
of how you actually run things very efficiently
here at Airtaxi but let’s talk about that right after our break.
==
According to Waze, or well, according to me,
Manila is the worst city for traffic.
Imagine, it takes a motorist 5 minutes just to traverse a kilometer
With the traffic congestion problem growing worse and worse
everyday, Airtaxis might just become a viable alternative.
This is the Pilatus PC-12 NG, this is a Swiss-made plane.
Very efficient, practical, gets you anywhere
you need to go in the Philippines.
And this is the first plane that you’ve got
when you started realizing that this could be more of a taxi?
Correct, yes, this is the one.
We know how airlines run
but how does Airtaxi run and how does it make money?
All right, so number one, we have our 24/7 customer hotline.
Now, we receive calls everyday,
and this doubles as an emergency hotline
also so if in case you need med evac,
you need to call them and the nurses will pick up
and we can assign a doctor to fly you with the helicopter,
or the plane to fly you back.
No matter how tempting, it’s just not practical
for anyone to hop into an Airtaxi every day.
So for Paj and his team, every flight is a golden opportunity
to give their clients—their money’s worth.
Customer service is number one because
you have people here spending hundreds, thousands of pesos,
even dollars, and then you have to give them
the quality service they paid for.
You have to give them top-notch service
so moving forward, we have our frequent flyer program.
We have our membership program.
If you’re a member, you can sign up with us,
and we can get good discounts.
So up to 20% discounts, we even have something
that’s much higher: 40% but sticking with the 20%,
it’s called the Emerald class aircard. So you get an aircard
and with this, we’ll give you 20%, priority,
and emergency medical evacuations as well because
when we conceptualized it when Typhoon Yolanda happened,
all the VIPs started calling us left and right and we say,
okay, we can help you but you have to fall in line,
you’re like number 11th in line, and they start
losing their minds because of course, it was an emergency.
They really need to get out right away.
So of course our priority was the people
who have been flying with us regularly
and so this is how we started developing it
to make sure that we give the best service
to the customers that have been loyal with us.
So the frequent flyer is how much percentage of the business?
For the Airtaxi business, it’s more than half.
Half the business, So about 50% is your frequent flyer,
how about the first timers?
What’s the basic profile of the first timers?
For first-timers, you have tourists, or people who just wanna try it.
It maybe comprises about 30% of it.
It’s a good way to get them to experience flying
even if it’s just one flight, you know, maybe 5 years ago,
this client, he’s just going to fly once for the heck of it, just to try it.
Five years later, he comes back, he’s running his own empire,
and he’s going to go back here and say,
Okay, this is the helicopter I had before.
I want a better one now.
So it’s a good way for them to step up.
I see. And the 20% I guess is for the medical?
Yeah, for the medical and the others, yes.
As expected, Airtaxi’s top patrons
are people who, in theory, can also buy their own planes.
This means the company is perpetually faced
with a tall order to convince clients
that flying with them—is still the better solution.
So we’re getting provided all of this service,
all of this quality, moving forward to all the way
if they’re at that level, instead of buying their own aircraft,
buying their own helicopter, buying their own plane,
we can provide that solution to them.
Here, we have a fleet, you can get a time share with us
or a membership with us, and you can just use it
when you want to instead of hiring a pilot,
building a hanger, putting that one plane in a big hanger
or a small hanger, and worrying about the maintenance,
worrying about the training and at the time you need to fly,
the pilot’s not available, or the aircraft’s broken.
For us, we have the fleet, we have the numbers,
so you can just call us and say, Hey, I need to fly.
Here, we have like five planes, you can pick.
What has been that defining thing for you guys to keep them recurring?
One thing about customer service is that
it doesn’t end when the customer leaves your hanger.
It actually starts there because you have to talk
to your customer every now and then.
You have to talk to them and say, hey I hope your flight went well,
I hope your business deal went well, if you want,
I can prepare something for you on your next trip,
something like that.
Because you have to go the extra mile so to speak.
We reach out to our customers to make sure they get what they want.
So we target especially our members to make sure
every time they fly with us, it’s like,
Welcome, Mr. Ledesma, we prepared this for you,
we prepared everything you need for your trip,
if you have a guest, we have prepared this for them as well.
And how do you know if they are happy customers?
What’s that sign that you always get?
It’s easy. If they come back and fly with us.
Now I found out everything I want to know
about the excellent customer service of Airtaxi
but the one thing our viewers want to know is:
Is Airtaxi making money?
But let’s talk about that right after our break.
===
Worldwide sales of helicopters are on an upward trend,
with Asia taking the largest share at 35 percent
Given current trends, it is estimated that the global helicopter industry
will be worth 370 billion euros in the next 20 years.
And finally we ask the most important
question here on the show: Is Airtaxi making money
but before that one, Paj, so many people think that you know,
you take a taxi or you take a flight because
there’s traffic on the ground.
So when the traffic exponentially increased here i
n Metro Manila, did your business improve significantly?

Yes, it did. I’ll explain why.

Because the traffic here in Manila does not just stay in Manila.
It reaches out to Clark, to Batangas, everywhere.
So what used to be a one-hour drive going to Clark
or one and a half, it’s now three hours.
Same thing when going to Batangas.
What used to be a one-hour-and-a-half drive
is now three hours, three and a half hours, so you know
it’s a big waste of time so we have customers who say,
hey, I want to go to Clark, go there for lunch or for a meeting,
then come back and resume their regular lives.
So can you say that the business went up exponentially when traffic increased as well?
Definitely, it did.
Did it stay that way, or is it continuing to increase?
It’s staying that way and people are getting used
to the traffic now but still people have grown accustomed
to getting to places really quick because again,
what was one hour is now 3 hours, and with us, it’s now 30 minutes.
So how’s the competitive space going now for the type of business that you guys do?
There’s not so much competition because there are other aircraft here
yes, but they’re usually owned by conglomerates
or owned by individuals that have them brokered out.
So for conglomerates, for example Ayala, they have
their own aircraft, they will fly out anybody that wants
to charter from them but if the bosses say
I’m going to fly out on this date, you’re out.
The executives of their company.
Correct, exactly. In the same way, if you’re an aircraft
owner and you broker it out, if you need to use the helicopter,
no matter who booked it, it’s your helicopter.
So you can say, no, I’m going to fly.
I see. How do you plan to scale Airtaxi?
What we do is we branch out to different areas of the Philippines.
The nice thing about us is that we have 7000 islands
and we have so many tourist destinations
and each of these destinations is that it’s a gateway
for us to grow and to expand and to basically connect
it to our existing service. The way we do it, example we have
our branch in Bohol, Boracay, in Puerto Princesa,
We started small and now they’re self-sustaining and operating on their own.
And you were telling me actually that if they do charter
with you guys eventually, the cost per person actually
gets much lower and becomes almost like a commercial flight.
Exactly. Like we have our flights in Bohol,
they’ll bring you around Bohol,
just for as low as 4,000 or 5,000 pesos per person
and it’s a quick trip because when you’re a tourist,
when you’re on vacation, time is gold.
Example, if you only have two days, the third day,
what you could have done?
So for us, we’ll bring you somewhere within 30 minutes, and bring you back.
I see. Do you also plan to buy more aircraft as well? More planes?
Of course, we’re expanding the fleet as we speak.
We’re adding additional two in the next three months.
With Airtaxi.ph still building up its warchest,
there seems to be no other way for this firm but to go up.
For the next 5 years, I foresee that we will
have dominated the entire country already.
We’re currently number one, so expanding it
with the smaller regents, yes, and of course,
once the ASEAN integration connects,
we can expand to other areas slowly, bit by bit.
With the same model that you guys are using right now in the Philippines?
Correct.
Now having said all these, with you saying you’re going
to be buying new aircraft, is the capital also coming from
within the business as well or do you borrow money from
the outside to finance the purchase of these aircraft?
Yes, we have internally generated revenue
that support our purchases and of course
we can have our aircraft finance if we choose to.
And the internally generated, that’s just purely
from Airtaxi and not coming from the mother company?
That’s correct.

Wow. So having said that, can you let us know: Is Airtaxi making money by itself?

Yes we are.
Okay, that’s it.
Well, thanks so much and just in case,
for the people watching here right now,
if they’re thinking, you know I wanna take an Airtaxi,
how do they go about it?
All right, you call our hotline, it’s 8555-5888
or email us at fly@airtaxi.ph and then we’ll customize
a package for you, or you can choose one of the pre-customized packages
so if you want to go one date trip, you want to go to Masungi
or you wanna go to Las Casas, you want to go diving in Oslob,
we’ll take care of it.
Wow, so I’m gonna contact you very soon.
Yeah, for sure. I look forward to it.
Thanks so much, thanks for guesting in the show. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
With companies finding innovative ways
to beat the traffic, Airtaxis just might change
the way that we travel in the future.
I’m RJ Ledesma, join me again next time for another bright idea.