Gregg Brunson-Pitts is the founder and CEO of Advanced Aviation Team (AAT), a charter brokerage based outside Washington, DC, in Arlington, VA. Here he speaks about the current state of business aviation, the political campaigns he’s been part of and advice he would give to someone wanting to start a career in business aviation.
What was your path to your current role?
My career started in 2002 as an intern in the White House scheduling office for President George W. Bush. After my internship in the White House ended and while I was still in college, I was offered a job with The Office of Presidential Advance as a volunteer advanced person tasked with helping coordinate the logistical arrangements for Presidential trips. Post college, I was offered a position with the Bush-Cheney presidential re-election campaign setting up public events and traveling across the country doing advanced work. President Bush won re-election in 2004 and I started working full-time in the White House travel office.
The White House travel office coordinates the charter aircraft that flies in tandem with Air Force One and carries members of the White House press corps, U.S. Secret Service, and additional White House support staff who do not fly on Air Force One. Soon after starting in this position, I was promoted to director of the White House travel office. I served out President Bush’s second term until 2009 and then I helped with the transition of the incoming
Obama administration. After leaving the White House, I went into the air charter industry and worked for a few other companies until 2015 when I founded Advanced Aviation Team.
Q: How do you think working at the White House prepared you for launching Advanced Aviation Team?
My tenure at the White House travel office has provided me with a shared language with many of my clients. This is particularly valuable given that we often work with family offices that have security details—an area I am well-versed in due to my White House experience.
Today I work with political campaigns and former office holders, leveraging the knowledge and experience I gained during my time at the White House. At a very young age while I was still in college, I was working with people who were very advanced in their career and that gave me exposure to working with people at a very high level. My experience working with folks at the State Department, U.S. Secret Service, and the media, plus outside stakeholders like hotels and aircraft charter providers, really gave me the exposure I needed to start my own company. I always wanted to start my own business and so the path I took set the stage for me to start Advanced Aviation Team.
What was behind the decision to launch Advanced Aviation Team back in 2015?
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Even when I was young, I knew I wanted to start my own business and be my own boss. I just didn’t know in what form and how I would get from here to there. Years ago I was a fitness instructor and I started toying around with the idea of owning my own fitness company or fitness studio. At the same time, I was involved in chartering aircraft on the side. I obviously landed on the charter business instead and it’s turned out better than I could have anticipated.
Can you tell me more about the political campaigns you’ve worked on?
We have supported and worked for a lot of campaigns over the past nearly nine years. Just a few highlights are the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020, the Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz presidential campaigns in 2016, the presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren in 2019 and 2020, and Pete Buttigieg in 2019-2020. We’re non-partisan and we work for both sides of the aisle.
How do you prepare for a busy campaign season?
We have strong and long-term relationships with our suppliers and vendors. Knowing where aircraft are and how we can make sure we have the right aircraft for a client is a key component to being ready for an upcoming busy election season. Having the right staff in place is also critical because it does get very busy, especially down the home stretch in the fall.
What are the logistics of planning for an event so large and with multiple legs?
Catering is really important. If we’re planning a trip that has multiple legs, or especially multiple legs in one day, a lot of times the aircraft is the only place where the traveling group will get to eat. We really try to think and prepare for having fresh meals available on each flight and make sure the aircraft is as comfortable as possible. It becomes that home away from home. In addition to meals, we ensure the aircraft has pillows and personal care items. Our team is always thinking about ways we can make the aircraft feel as comfortable as possible because a lot of times it’s a clients’ only refuge away from the rest of the world.
From a logistics perspective, staying on top of the weather and staying on top of what’s happening with air traffic control and the national airspace system is key to keeping on schedule. We always try to stay one, two, three steps ahead of whatever is going on and that way the campaign doesn’t have to think about all these things and when they step onboard the plane.
What makes Advanced Aviation Team unique from your competitors?
Two areas we excel the most at are roadshows and multi-stop trips. I think we are a unique provider for our industry from this perspective. We can see the three steps ahead.
We work really well executing multi-stop trips, dedicated charters, and negotiating those types of complex contracts on behalf of our clients. Two more types of business we excel at and makes us unique are airliners and group travel. We can customize the experience no matter how complex and there are not a lot of other providers that are able to pull this off like we do.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced since launching?
I think Covid was probably the biggest challenge. Like most industries and most companies, we had a complete stop in client travel in March of 2020 when the world started to shut down. But it then quickly ramped back up and very heavily our clients started traveling again as private aviation in general saw a surge in demand. I think one decision I’m most proud of since starting this company is that I did not furlough or lay off any of our employees during the pandemic. I made sure that everybody still got paid and I kept all my employees. Looking back it was a very important decision because when our clients started traveling again, they turned it on 100% and we were there to support them. Plus, we were there to support campaign and candidate travel which was extremely complex during Covid. The extra layer of routine Covid testing made the logistics that we do for the campaigns even more complicated.
What do you believe the current state of business aviation is?
Up until about late 2023 or even early 2024, there was a surge in demand in business aviation. However, it has just recently contracted back to 2019 levels. It’s taken this long for us to get back there in terms of demand and aircraft availability which is less of an issue today. I don’t think pricing is back to where it was before mostly due to inflation and there are certainly lots of choices for clients. I’m also seeing more executives and celebrities turning to charter instead of ownership, mainly for privacy and security concerns since planes can be tracked. We are primarily an ad-hoc charter provider and so the majority of our clients come to us on a one-off basis. Then, hopefully, they are satisfied with what we’ve provided to them and then they come back again on an ad-hoc basis. Opting for charter proves to be an excellent choice in comparison to ownership, as it eliminates numerous expenses, a trackable tail number, and the requirement to hire and manage a crew along with associated costs.
What are the short-term goals for the company? What are the long-term milestones of the company?
Short term goals for my company are to ensure our clients are well taken care of and the client experience is on par to what it’s been the past nine years. Looking ahead, I’d like to work with more family offices and multi-stop road shows.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to start a career in business aviation?
While business aviation may appear glamorous from an external perspective, the key advice I would offer is to seek out a mentor or someone with experience in the industry. Asking for their insights and advice is crucial, as learning from their experiences is essential for acquiring the knowledge and information needed to ensure you deliver the best possible service to clients.
