INTERVIEW: Steve Varsano of The Jet Business on private aviation and his growing excitement for the eVTOL space

Sit­u­at­ed in Lon­don’s Park Lane and the afflu­ent dis­trict of May­fair is The Jet Busi­ness, the world’s first ever street-lev­el cor­po­rate avi­a­tion show­room for pri­vate jet air­craft.

Found­ed by Steve Varsano, he has been suc­cess­ful­ly trad­ing cor­po­rate jets for more than three decades — such as mod­els from Gulf­stream, Embraer, Fal­con, Boe­ing, Air­bus and Bom­bardier. But as elec­tric avi­a­tion is set to take off with­in the next 2–3 years, Steve has got ambi­tious plans to bring his busi­ness into the eVTOL space. 

eVTOL Insights vis­it­ed The Jet Busi­ness to meet Steve and talk about this emerg­ing mar­ket, and also see for our­selves the mag­nif­i­cent show­room which has gen­er­at­ed so much atten­tion on social media. eVTOL Insights’ Exec­u­tive Edi­tor Jason Pritchard asked the ques­tions.

JP: Steve, you told us in advance that you’re a big believ­er in the eVTOL space. What got you so inter­est­ed?

Steve Varsano: We’ve all been sort of brain­washed since we were lit­tle kids about fly­ing cars. Whether it’s the DeLore­an fly­ing in Back to the Future, the Jet­sons, Flash Gor­don, Star Wars or any of those kinds of movies. 

“It [eVTOL air­craft] is com­ing so I think the time is here. You’ve got the com­bi­na­tion of AI and tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple who are con­scious of the envi­ron­ment. It’s just so many things that are com­ing togeth­er; it seems like the time is now.”

JP: There’s a lot of talk about when eVTOL air­craft will be fly­ing. Some say next year or 2026 but for you, was there one par­tic­u­lar moment that real­ly con­vinced you they are going to be here soon­er than peo­ple might think?

SV: I don’t think it was one spe­cif­ic thing, it was more that all of a sud­den with the con­ver­sa­tion of AI and social media, peo­ple start talk­ing about it. 

“You look at the amount of mon­ey invest­ed into this space by some big, big play­ers and then the SPACs (Spe­cial Acqui­si­tion Pur­pose Com­pa­nies) which got merged togeth­er with these eVTOL com­pa­nies and raised bil­lions of dol­lars. You have to stand up and take notice, and that’s what the world has done.”

JP: I’d love to get your thoughts on the pri­vate avi­a­tion mar­ket at present, but also, how do you think eVTOL air­craft will fit into that seg­ment? 

SV: “I think most of the eVTOL OEMs have been focus­ing on this air­line com­muter feed­er mar­ket and they are com­plete­ly ignor­ing gen­er­al avi­a­tion and per­son­al use. There are a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand small­er air­planes in the world and there’s also hun­dreds of thou­sands of pilots out there. I think there’s so many peo­ple who are ener­gised by this new form of trans­port. 

“Then there are a cou­ple of small­er $100,000 con­cepts that you can basi­cal­ly fly with­out a pilot’s license. This kind of stuff is bring­ing a lot of younger peo­ple, who are more ener­getic, future-think­ing and tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed, out of the shad­ows so it’s mak­ing it much more excit­ing. I think there is big poten­tial on both sides, I have my own opin­ions on which comes first, but I think some­times the indus­try is look­ing in the wrong direc­tion.

“Everyone’s focus is that tech­nol­o­gy is going to be so much faster than the reg­u­la­to­ry process; that’s prob­a­bly true for every­where in the world, and tech­nol­o­gy — whether it’s quan­tum com­put­ing or AI — is mov­ing faster and faster. I’m not wor­ried about how long it’s going to take for a eVTOL air­craft jour­ney to be approved to fly between cen­tral Lon­don and Heathrow or JFK and New York City. That’s not where I’m focused. 

“I think you’re going to have oth­er poten­tial mar­kets. If you look at South­east Asia, there are tens of thou­sands of islands there. And in Africa and the Mid­dle East, there’s cur­rent­ly min­i­mal infra­struc­ture and that’s where you real­ly need to have this kind of prod­uct. I think these kind of demo­graph­ic loca­tions will prob­a­bly take it up much quick­er. 

“And I’m not real­ly wor­ried about the reg­u­la­to­ry process in those geo­graph­ic areas because they have the need much more that is not being ful­filled by any oth­er mode of trans­porta­tion.”

JP: And how would The Jet Busi­ness evolve when pri­vate eVTOL air­craft become avail­able? I under­stand you have some excit­ing plans for the mar­ket.

SV: Yes, I have my ideas of how I like to par­tic­i­pate in this mar­ket for sure. And we’ll see how it’s going to evolve. I’ve been talk­ing to a few of the dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers about my idea.

“I’m try­ing to stay rel­e­vant on social media, which is help­ing me be in touch with a lot of young peo­ple. I might be edu­cat­ing them about cor­po­rate avi­a­tion, but they’re also edu­cat­ing me which I’m thank­ful for. I think there is def­i­nite­ly a place for us to evolve or have a side busi­ness in the eVTOL mar­ket.”

JP: You men­tioned ear­li­er about the incred­i­ble stats from the con­tent The Jet Busi­ness posts on social media. Can you please share how this has impact­ed bring­ing more peo­ple on board with what the com­pa­ny is doing in this space? 

SV: Social media is real­ly amaz­ing and it’s obvi­ous­ly skewed to the younger gen­er­a­tion, who are much more open to tech­nol­o­gy chang­ing. They know what’s going on and even­tu­al­ly will dic­tate what direc­tion the future of trans­porta­tion will take.

“Social media has a big impact on mould­ing the image of how it’s going to ful­fill a need in the world. There are a lot of influ­encers who have major fol­low­ers. If a few of these peo­ple hop in a eVTOL air­craft and say ‘wow, this is amaz­ing’. Then you’re done and the world will accept it. How­ev­er, if one of them walks off and says the oppo­site, that could also be a neg­a­tive prob­lem.

“There’s the old say­ing that you don’t want to ask a ques­tion you don’t know the answer to; that’s very impor­tant with this busi­ness. And I think how it real­ly rolls out with what safe­ty pre­cau­tions are so impor­tant.”

JP: I’d love to ask how 2024 has gone so far for The Jet Busi­ness. Can you paint a pic­ture of how busi­ness has gone so far and an out­look of the pri­vate avi­a­tion mar­ket, espe­cial­ly as avi­a­tion took a big hit dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

SV: “Yeah, sure. Well, as soon as COVID hit in March 2020, every­body thought the end of the world was here and nobody was going to fly any­more. But that didn’t last long as after two to three months, the bot­tom hit and it slow­ly start­ed com­ing back up and in 2021 and 2022 it real­ly start­ed increas­ing. 

“By Decem­ber 2022 into Jan­u­ary 2023, it real­ly peaked and every­thing that would his­tor­i­cal­ly depre­ci­ate in the world, whether it was air­planes, cars or motor­bikes, actu­al­ly went up in price because there was such a demand for these kinds of things. There was a real anom­aly in the mar­ket­place. 

“Since then there’s been a much calmer approach to the mar­kets and prices have come down a lit­tle, and more things are com­ing onto the mar­ket for sale, but there’s still a lot of activ­i­ty. We still haven’t hit the pre-COVID-19 lev­els, but we’re still above 2019 lev­els. I think there were so many new peo­ple who came into the avi­a­tion space dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. These peo­ple could afford to do it or had a need to do it, but could nev­er finan­cial­ly get their head around it. 

“COVID forced them into the mar­ket, whether it was because air­lines weren’t avail­able or because of health and safe­ty rea­sons. If only a third of them stay, the mar­ket from 2019 will have more peo­ple in the indus­try when it set­tles in and I think that’s why you’re still see­ing more activ­i­ty.

“Busi­ness in 2024 has start­ed pret­ty good, con­sid­er­ing Jan­u­ary is usu­al­ly slow, with a cou­ple of good trans­ac­tions com­plet­ed.”

JP: Have you had any con­ver­sa­tions with your cus­tomers about eVTOL air­craft? Do they know about the mar­ket and if so, why do you think that is?

SV: “Our friend Peter Dia­man­dis said ‘every­thing is a crazy idea until some­body does it’. Com­pa­nies are build­ing the air­craft, but nobody wants to say ‘Wow, this is amaz­ing and I can’t wait to do it.’ because it isn’t ready yet.

“The first eVTOL air­craft could get cer­ti­fied late this year and more over the next two or three years and then they’re going to come and come. Every­one will become believ­ers after 10 min­utes when the first pas­sen­gers take a flight. This is going to hap­pen, whether it’s in six, 12, 18 or 24 months. It is here and those naysay­ers will be proven wrong.”

JP: Can you tell us more about the val­ue propo­si­tion of The Jet Busi­ness? With this won­der­ful show­room in Park Lane, what sets you apart from your com­peti­tors?

SV: “I con­sid­er us to be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than any of our com­peti­tors. The rea­son this whole con­cept came about was because I was in the indus­try a long time ago and left to get into the pri­vate equi­ty merg­ers and acqui­si­tions busi­ness for a num­ber of years.

“Before I left, eighty per cent of the jets were in the Unit­ed States, 19 per cent in Europe and there was one per cent sprout­ed every­where. So if you want to go see a client, it was easy to hop on an aero­plane and do that.

“When I came back to the indus­try in 2009, right after the finan­cial cri­sis, that whole spread of demo­graph­ics of who the clients were changed. And all of these fron­tier emerg­ing mar­kets came out of nowhere, such as Nige­ria, South Africa, Chi­na, Rus­sia and India. These mar­kets were grow­ing leaps and bounds and peo­ple had to start going there and to oth­er coun­tries. It was a time of glob­al­i­sa­tion, so 80 per cent of the jets in the US became 50 per cent as there was this huge poten­tial out­side of the US and Europe. 

“I like to go and see a lot of my clients, but I couldn’t do that with this new demo­graph­ic spread. I decid­ed I had to build a show­room to get these peo­ple to come to me. It was a crazy idea and most peo­ple thought I was nuts, but we decid­ed to do it any­way and we’ve been here in Lon­don for 12 years. 

“The fact is that we real­ly believe in edu­cat­ing a client so much in the process that they know why they are mak­ing a deci­sion. In any deci­sion and process of any acqui­si­tion, if you don’t know the ques­tions to ask, you can’t get any answers. And if you don’t know the answers, you nev­er feel com­fort­able mov­ing for­ward.

“An edu­cat­ed con­sumer is our best cus­tomer, so the app on the video wall in our show­room is real­ly made to take cus­tomers through a whole process and in 30 min­utes, I can make some­one who doesn’t know any­thing about the indus­try, become an expert. And that’s to show them what ques­tions they should be ask­ing. 

“When we start inter­act­ing on our video wall or even on the phone, we put togeth­er an incred­i­ble pre­sen­ta­tion they can real­ly analyse in sim­ple terms which address­es the points where they are look­ing for answers. 

“Our prod­uct is so much more all encom­pass­ing; we don’t care which plane you buy, we just want you to buy the one that best suits your needs. And if you’re sell­ing, we want to sell it for them and for the best price pos­si­ble. We know every­thing in the world that is for sale. We’re real­ly a dif­fer­ent kind of ven­dor than any oth­er com­peti­tor.”

JP: We’re cur­rent­ly sit­ting in an incred­i­ble mod­el of an air­craft. Can you tell us more about it and what is the reac­tion like from cus­tomers who see it for the first time? 

SV: *laughs* So this is an Air­bus 319 or 320, the same fuse­lage as an Easy­jet air­craft. It’s to get peo­ple into the space and get com­fort­able that you’re think­ing you’re in your plane.

“And then when you get to the video wall, it’s a whole oth­er process in that stand­point. The way it’s laid out puts peo­ple in a dif­fer­ent mind­set; rather than going to see a client in their office or a cof­fee shop, they real­ly can focus and know what they’re talk­ing about. 

“We’ve had peo­ple come in who have been pilots for 30 years and guys in jeans and a t‑shirt say­ing ‘Steve, I’ve got five min­utes and some­one told me I should come and see you. What have you got?’ And they’re here two hours lat­er. We’ve had all the man­u­fac­tur­ers who come here, from CEOs, buy­ers to main­te­nance peo­ple. Every­body is blown away by the tech­nol­o­gy and the process we take them through on the video wall. It’s quite sat­is­fy­ing.”

JP: Any final thoughts, Steve?

SV: “There are just so many facets for the eVTOL busi­ness. It’ll be great to see what the real catch word will end up being because eVTOL isn’t real­ly a sexy name. Fly­ing cars is, but it doesn’t real­ly address what they do, and pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing drones prob­a­bly doesn’t catch you either. I’m super excit­ed about the indus­try and sure we’ll have some par­tic­i­pa­tion in it. I also think a lot of peo­ple will be think­ing they should have got­ten into this mar­ket soon­er.”