Lion Heart offers alternative flight possibilities

Lion Heart Aviation LLC is taking off as an aircraft provider.

The Nixa-based company matches travelers typically businesses travelers with one or more of the 15 privately owned planes it has under contract. Lion Heart locates companies or individuals with airplanes, then acts as a broker to match travelers up with those planes during their down times.

The Nixa-based company is owned by CEO Carrie Walegir, and husband John, and Ron Manning, former director of flight operations for Bombardier Flexjet. John Walegir was a chief pilot at Bombardier Flexjet and will be over either sales or aircraft procurement with Lion Heart, Walegir said. Manning is vice president of operations.

Lion Heart, which currently has eight employees, is moving to close a venture capital arrangement Nov. 1, Carrie Walegir said.

Manning said the sought-after $1 million will be used to hire up to 32 employees by May.

The deal is being ironed out with some of the aircraft owners Lion Heart works with. The fresh capital would go toward establishing regional sales managers, aircraft schedulers and dispatchers, and secretarial positions.

Lion Hearts aircraft are located in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Idaho, Nevada and California, said Walegir. Aircraft size ranges from Cessna Conquest 425 and Beechcraft King Air 200 turbo-props to the more than $20 million Challenger 604.

Manning said the company plans to have 50 aircraft under contract by fall 2004.

Renting a plane, however, takes some bucks.

Manning said making the approximately two-hour, 1,600-mile round trip flight from Springfield to Hilton Head, S.C., in a Learjet 60 costs $11,568.50 This figure includes a $10,440 base charge for the aircraft, $200 for landing fees and $928.50 in federal taxes. If the plane was to remain overnight, another $500 for crew charges and $1,160 in wait time fees would apply. Pilot fees are included in this basic charge.

Operational differences

According to Manning, how Lion Heart differs from charter operations or fractional ownership is its work as an outsourcing agent.

Virtually all commercial or business aircraft operate under Part 135 regulations, which govern everything from how many hours a day the plane can be flown to maintenance schedules to pilot responsibilities. The other two primary certificates of operation are Part 121 for commercial airlines and the more lenient Part 91 for privately owned planes, Walegir added.

We dont have any certificates. We go out to small or 135 operators and offer them our expertise in the industry, and they sign exclusive marketing and charter agreements with us. So we get a portion of all charter that we sell on their aircraft.

They (plane owners) either have the option of going out and hiring their own employees, training them, and putting them out to help market and charter this aircraft, or they can outsource that to us, Manning said.

We are right now more of an ad hoc charter, which means on-demand charter. And we are moving into the block charter program right now where we are establishing pods of markets where were doing it different in that were invoking exclusive marketing arrangements prior to offering the block charter agreement. So we go after the airplanes first, then go after the customers in the base where we have the airplane, Walegir said.

Chartering a plane involves purchasing flying time for a specific trip to be made. Fractional ownership involves purchasing 1/16th increments of an aircraft, which allows the buyer to fly 50 occupied flying hours per year over the term of the contract, said Steven Phillips, director of marketing for Dallas-based Bombardier Flexjet.

Growing planes

In February 2002, the company became a limited liability company.

There was no profit in 2002. It was all expense, cost, building an LLC, developing a location for us to work out of with a vision of what we were doing here, Walegir said.

Lion Heart was formed in the spring of 1999 by Carrie Walegir marketing one airplane stationed in Atlanta. There was no overhead, just me and a cell phone and a computer, she said. That airplane sold in the fall of 2001, and from there she thought about a marketing company.

I began to put this prospectus in mind of what we would do, if we went out as a marketing company and began to arrange for exclusive marketing agreements for airplanes on (a Federal Aviation Administration Part) 135 certificate, Walegir said.

Lion Heart would like to become a fixed-base operator at the Ozark Airport, once construction there is complete, Manning said. Our ultimate plan is to build our own facility out at Airpark South (Ozark airport) once Springfield puts in the new runway.