Air travel puts the world at your fingertips, unlocking trips to destinations far and wide. You can travel thousands of miles in mere hours, visiting and seeing the places you’ve dreamt of.
Private jets take that even further, with personalized service and itineraries tailored to your schedule. However, even then, issues can still arise, whether due to aircraft malfunctions and delays or service that falls short of expectations.
Elevate Aviation Group, a fully integrated aviation services company, takes private jets to new levels, focusing on every detail of the journey. One example is the Kentucky Derby, where EAG’s sister arm, Private Jet Services, has been operating complex movements for the race as far back as 2003, utilizing VIP Boeing Aircraft.
I spoke to Greg Raiff, the company’s Founder & CEO, about how the company took shape and what differentiates it from the competition.
EAG: From a dorm room to the world stage
Elevate Aviation Group’s origins can be traced to Greg Raiff’s desire to take a spring break trip with his high school classmates. From there, it blossomed into an international provider of tailored air travel to presidential candidates, rock stars, and professional athletes. I asked Greg about how he built the company from the ground up.
The Manual: You have a really awesome company you’ve built up. I was so fascinated by that story. Can you tell me a little bit about how you started everything from scratch?
Greg Raiff: Sure. I grew up in New York City and went to one of those specialized high schools, Bronx High School of Science. And there’d been a tradition of a subset — we’ll call them the upper middle class kids from Manhattan on the West Side. Instead of going to Jones Beach for graduation, they would go on a spring break trip.
So I called a woman who at the time was named Kate Evans—she’s long since passed and retired—who was at the Bahamas Tourism Office, and said, ‘How do I organize a group?‘ She put me in touch with the travel agency up in Stamford, Connecticut, that specialized in group trips. And the long story short is that I needed 20 kids to go with me to get a free trip.
And so 472 students later, Dominic, the travel agent from Connecticut, called me and said, ‘You have to stop.’ You’ve now filled the largest airplane at the time known to man, a 747-200, operated by Tower Air. That paid my freshman year at Middlebury. And then I decided, well, you know, that’s a lot better than washing dishes or running the chairlift. So why don’t I just start my own company out of my dorm room? That became a company called Student City, which was the brand behind MTV Spring Break.
But fast forward, the idea is that in the 10 years I was in the student travel business, I became infected with the aviation bug. Long story short, the company that is Elevate Aviation Group today got started really in 2001. And the etymology behind the company’s name is that the very first music tour we did was the U2 Elevation Tour in 2001. And literally, I still work with the same people, producers, and production teams today, 25 years later. I just got back from doing a concert for two million people in Rio for Lady Gaga. And, you know, literally our company is named after the piece of business they trusted us with in 2001, and they’re still clients today.
EAG: It’s all in the details
The Manual: It sounds like you are offering, just like you said, an elevated in-flight experience for your clients.
Greg Raiff: I think that these days, right, we all know that it’s an experiential economy, right? I find it’s more about the act of reducing stress, right? There’s actually a biochemistry sort of relationship between travel. Your stress levels go up when you travel, no matter who you are. And stress is bad, right?
It’s bad for your health. It’s bad for your psyche. It’s bad for your well-being. It’s bad for your digestive tract. It’s bad for your physical recovery. And so we try and put all of our time into planning.
I’ll say sources of inspiration—you can figure out for yourself whether or not he’s a client or not—is the Founder, CEO of AirBnB, and Brian [Chesky] gives this chat where he talks about a six-star experience, right? And basically, the idea is that we know that there’s a six-star hotel and some guys in the UAE are shooting for a seven-star hotel, right? Because they just want to one-up everyone. But basically speaking, the industry shoots for five-star service, right? Or three Michelin stars.
And Brian gives this really inspiring chat that really speaks to me, where he talks about, well, if five stars is you check in and someone helps you with your bag, what does six stars look like?
Maybe six stars is the general manager meets you at the curb and walks you to your room, and you don’t have to stop at the check-in desk because they’re going to do all that in the room. And maybe seven stars is that the general manager sends an ambassador to the airport, and they meet you when you’re getting off your flight, and they collect your bags for you, and they hand you a cold towel, and they put you in their hotel car.
And maybe eight stars is that they meet you at the front door of your house, because why shouldn’t your celebration start when you start to travel, right? Why wait until you’ve gone through all the stress? And maybe nine stars is that they send Elon out to your house, and he puts you in a rocket ship and sends you into outer space.
Because at least now, if you miss by a star or two, you still deliver the world’s single singularly best travel experience from a service model perspective, and that’s sort of like what we’re organized around; it’s not about the quality of the linens on the plane or which sturgeon the caviar came from. It’s about proactively thinking about the passengers, calling the passengers guests, right, rather than customers. That’s where the difference starts.
How a recent Asian trip showcased EAG’s attention to detail
A recent gathering in Japan demonstrated EAG’s commitment to next-level service and detail. Greg expanded on how the company made that happen.
Greg Raiff: We had a large financial services firm that was operating a bi-annual regional gathering of thousands of their employees from all over the Pacific rim. Obviously, some [came] from the United States to help chair the meetings.
But we ended up operating 13 flights on wide-body aircraft into both Tokyo airports. So we had people checking in our guests at every one of those airports and every one of those countries. We had sort of a command team sitting on the ground in Tokyo. We had backup aircraft identified. We flew thousands of people in and out of this meeting over the course of four days, not one bag was misplaced. I mean, everybody made it, everybody made it on time.
We’ve built an entirely different business. Days before you ever get to your date of departure, we have a team of people. That’s taking every flight before it’s even delayed and saying, okay, guys, when this flight to Tokyo out of Delhi is delayed, what’s our solution? What’s our backup? And not only what’s our plan B, but what’s our plan C? Okay. Let’s call that airline. Let’s call that terminal. Let’s make certain those pilots are there. Do they have flight plans for it? Do they have all the ops specs?
EAG provides an edge to professional athletes
Greg also described how EAG’s focused service enhances recovery for NHL players.
Greg Raiff: So a typical National Hockey League team will fly 70, 75 flights in the course of a season, right? And in aviation, we measure time in tenths of an hour, right? Six-minute increments. Okay. And so we have, for over 15 years, sent out our own staff that does things like make certain that the gate is open for the buses to go through, help make certain that the flight attendants are ready.
Our goal is to shave a tenth, two tenths off every single flight. If you fly 70 segments in a year to keep it easy, and I save the 12 minutes on every flight of the garbage that you’ve experienced even flying commercially, that’s 840 minutes in a season. Wow. Well, that’s, let me do the math. That’s something like 14 hours of extra rest time, right?
So those guys burn 10,000 calories a day. And every single one of them struggles to end five pounds of where they started the season because they’re getting lighter and lighter and lighter, because they literally cannot get enough fuel on board and get enough rest and get enough recovery to keep the weight on, right?
So if I can get you more fuel on board and get you into a bed and give you, in the course of a season, 14 additional hours of sleep versus the guys you’re skating against, you’re gonna score one more goal. You’re gonna win one more game. And in the National Hockey League, the only game that matters, like in all the pro sports, is the very last game you play, right?
EAG’s future plans
The Manual: I’ve learned so much cool stuff here, Greg. Where are you looking to take EAG in the future?
Greg Raiff: We have an aircraft brokerage. We have another division that then helps you inspect that airplane, repair it, think of it as a garage for airplanes, right? We call it an MRO. And that MRO helps you make certain that if you’re buying a pre-owned aircraft, it’s the right airplane. We help you maintain it and preserve the asset value.
The aircraft management business, which both hires the pilots and takes all the headache out of it and delivers the backups, also generates charter revenue for you to help offset your fixed costs if that’s a model that you’re interested in.
So we think of it as sort of one of the world’s very few fully integrated aviation services platforms. And the next few months, you’ll see us roll out a sort of broader audience app that’s designed to help us increase the base of the pyramid and create a broader reach for more people, right?
By creating a slightly less expensive, slightly more automated service, as well as a staffing agency for pilots and flight attendants, to help make it easier for people to find those resources. We’re very fixated on delivering on the mission of being one-stop shopping for every dollar you wanna invest in private aviation, right?
