Melbourne, Australia-based aviation consultancy Wolf Industries Pacific has created and launched its CMR (cost management and reduction) programme, that ensures perpetual oversight and reduction of the fixed and variable expenses associated with business aircraft ownership and operation; the aim is to reduce the global spend of around $30 billion per year.

Business jet pilot, engineer and founder Dale Anderson says CMR programmes are a world first: “For the first time ever, a solution exists that seamlessly integrates within an owner's support network to allocate, track, analyse and, most importantly, optimise its costs, as and when they occur.”

Savings realised through the programme won't affect the aircraft's operation: “The fixed costs to own a ready to fly large cabin jet can be around three million dollars per year and, depending on the hours you fly, many more millions per annum in fuel, maintenance, support services and miscellaneous expenses. The CMR programme now offers the capacity to save an owner hundreds of thousands of dollars with zero impact on dispatch reliability or safety.”

Anderson believes this is the only viable option if you want constant owner and operation specific results. “Given they do not offer perpetual oversight there are limitations to on-demand audits and current providers of software services offering transparency, while comparing a user's spending with benchmark data simply doesn't assess an owners individual needs,” he continues. “Reliable benchmark data is valuable, and we certainly use it, but it really is the datum point from which owner specific cost management and reduction can then commence. Our CMR programme interrogates every line item within every invoice for accuracy, validity and efficiency relative to their actual operation and if certain issues are identified, they are acted on before the bill is paid.

“By capturing and analysing this data, the CMR programme will then advise and enforce efficiency programmes or other strategies that reduce the costs of ownership before they even occur; it is a beast of a service.”

Whilst the CMR programme will keep those paying the bills happy, he realises the aviation industry itself may be hesitant. Given the estimated +$30 billion it costs owners worldwide to own and operate their business jets, if the programme enables just 10 per cent in savings that would amount to several billion dollars less revenue per year.

Yet Anderson believes this is a positive: “I have seen high net worth owners being billed excessively and abandoning jet ownership as a result, and I have seen better informed owners, with fewer means at their disposal, own and operate a jet while remaining long term patrons of business aviation.

“It's shortsighted not to see this as beneficial for the industry. If fractional or independent owners spend less on, and become more educated about, their aircraft costs through the CMR programme, they are more likely to retain ownership.”