the times | Saturday April 30 2022 55The ManifestoBusiness
Q&A
Who is your mentor?
The late, former Air
Partner chairman Peter
Saunders, who taught
me a lot about brand
and customers
Who do you most
admire? Jürgen Klopp,
Sir Dave Brailsford, Toto
Wolff
What was the most
important event in
your working life?
Being appointed
chief executive of
Air Partner
What does
leadership mean
to you? Leading by
example, making
sure you are fully
engaged with yourCV
Age: 57
Education: Greater
Brighton Metropolitan
College
Career: 1989: various
commercial roles at Air
2000, All Leisure and
Air Partner; executive
roles at Air Partner;
1999: commercial
manager, UK; 2001: UK
managing director;
2006: chief operating
officer; 2010: chief
executive; 2022:
president,
international charter
and services, Wheels
Up; also non-executive
director, Flylogix
Family: Married, one
daughterpeople
Does money motivate
you? It is a motivator,
but job satisfaction and
making a difference are
more important
What is your favourite
television programme?
Kirstie and Phil’s Love It
or List It, below
How do you relax?
Cyclingbeen retained to spearhead that
European drive.
Air Partner’s chartering businesses
are split equally between private jets
(where it does more leisure than
executive business and has attracted
the wealthy wanting to avoid
shutdown or cluttered airports),
freighters (in which it has had a good
pandemic, ferrying in vaccines andPPE and helping freight-forwarders to
get round supply chain dislocation)
and group charters. The latter
previously had relied on big corporate
and exhibition events. Lost to the
pandemic, it offset that with sports
teams preferring for health security
reasons to charter aircraft than take
alternative means of transport. Air
Partner works for the Wales football
team and has been used by the likes
of Manchester City, Manchester
United, Chelsea and Real Madrid.
The World Cup in Qatar this winter
will be busy as the company ferries
both teams and their supporters.
Fancy a smart six-seater from
Farnborough to Doha? That probably
would be £70,000 each way at present
quotes.
The company also works for the
British and other governments, as
well as corporates getting people into
and out of places in an emergency. It
has been as busy during the Ukraine
war as it was at the beginning the
pandemic getting stranded
passengers back from cruise ships.
More controversially, it also helps in
the deporting of individuals to Africa
and the Caribbean, a business that
hasn’t slowed down during the
pandemic.
“The deal gives Wheels Up a great
opportunity to expand beyond private
jets,” Briffa said. “It was always going
to be a challenge for a company our
size to scale up and motor on beyond
where we are.”
As a better-funded company, AirL
ong-time residents of the
East Sussex villages of
Rottingdean and Saltdean
might recall that in the early
1980s they were served, if
not by Ernie and his famous fastest
milk cart in the West, then by an 18-
year-old milkman with similar
ambitions.
Having grown up in nearby
Woodingdean and left school with
some CSEs but no O or A levels, the
young Mark Briffa took a job as a
motor mechanic. But, fed up with the
grime and dirt, he had his head
turned by a job at the Unigate dairy.
They gave him a round with the
worst debt in the area. He cleaned
that up and increased sales, helped by
getting technicians in the dairy to
power up his electric milk float to see
just how fast it could go from nought
to 20mph. “We had to rope all the
milk in to stop it flying all over the
place. It was great fun.”
He was given more responsibility in
the dairy, but by the age of 22 had set
off for a job in baggage handling at
Gatwick airport. “I thought I’d died
and gone to heaven. We were meeting
up with all the cabin crews, having
loads of parties. It was hilarious.”
A similar story unfolded. He rose
quickly to become an airport traffic
officer, spicing up the job by
experimenting with how to line up his
vehicles decanting passengers and
baggage, asking: “How fast do you
reckon we can do all this’?”
Rather than get sucked into airport
operations, he went into sales with
Air 2000 and Owners Abroad until
he was approached by Air London to
become an aircraft charter broker.
Surprised at the offer, “I said, ‘All
right, let’s give it a go.’
“I couldn’t believe the
opportunities. I was different to
everyone there. It was full of
university types. I had an airline and
baggage-handling background. I
knew the costs of airlines. I was
teaching them that you can buy for
this and sell for that and how much
risk you could take.”
Again, he rose through the ranks,
but this time he stayed around to the
point that the company, by now listed
on the stock market and called Air
Partner, asked him to take the top job.
So... Mark Briffa. South coast
milkman to jet-setting international
company chief executive in less than
three decades. And now, after 12 years
in charge and at the age of 57, he is
taking on another challenge.
Realising that Air Partner was
running out of runway as an
independent in a fast-consolidating
aircraft charter market, Briffa was
part of a board that recently acceded
to an £84 million takeover by Wheels
Up, the coming operator in the
American private jet market that,
until a recent market sell-off, was
valued at $1 billion on the New York
Stock Exchange.
Wheels Up and its entrepreneurial
founder Kenny Dichter see the future
of private jets as an on-demandservice, a Netflix model, if you like, or
an aeronautical version of Zipcar car-
sharing. And it has acquired Air
Partner to launch an assault on the
European market as competition hots
up with other key private jet charter
players such as VistaJet and
Directional Aviation. In reality,
Wheels Up is getting something more
in the Air Partner deal and Briffa hasBriffa has a new partner in aircraft
chartering and isn’t about to fly away
Wheels Up has plans
for European expansion
after its takeover of a
London-listed rival,
reports Robert Lea
Partner as Wheels Up in
Europe will be better able to buy
forward capacity, which it does from
management companies that look
after aircraft typically owned by
corporates and the wealthy, who let
their jets like people would a holiday
home when they are not using it.
The business will be busy around
the Queen’s jubilee celebration this
summer. The Monaco Formula One
motor racing grand prix is also
always a firm fixture in the charter
calendar.
The challenges ahead are
technological, digitalising an
industry to optimise capacity where
in the past it involved personal
relationship broking; and the future
of what private jet travel will be in a
world changed by intercontinental
video meetings. Decarbonisation
pressures mean that flying electric
taxis will change the landscape,
though Briffa concedes it is way too
early to understand how.
Staying on with Wheels Up after
the Air Partner deal was always the
plan: “I walked in the door at Air
Partner 26 years ago without a pot to
piss in quite frankly. I couldn’t believe
the opportunities in front of me and
took them and progressed
accordingly.
“I am a very loyal individual. I look
back to where I came from and look
at what this business has given me.
I’ve met some good people and some
not so good.
“I feel duty-bound to our people to
see this journey through. I am not
going to walk away. That’s not what I
signed up for. Stay loyal to the people
who have stayed loyal to you. That’s
really important.” That may be an
old-fashioned virtue, but “I was
brought up that way. There are values
in life.”
The Briffa name comes from his
Maltese grandfather. “I was one of
five brought up in a council house.
My mum left when I was seven. My
dad died when I was 18.”
He says loyalty to people is a trait
that he shares with his late father.
“He loved aviation and it is a sad
thing he didn’t see our success. He
was a bus driver, then worked in
removals, then at Watney’s brewery.
He was a fantastic people person.
People loved working with him.
“I love working with people. For me
it’s natural. I come from a normal
background. I’ve just been fortunate
in where I have got to.”Mark Briffa is looking to bright new horizons with Wheels Up in Europe after the takeover of Air Partner, the charter groupPartnerasWheelsUpinPETER TARRY FOR THE TIMES