Silverjet: Lawrence Hunt

Aviation = serious carbon emissions. So what’s a guy like Lawrence Hunt doing launching yet another airline?

Hunt’s not your average entrepreneur and doesn’t do anything by halves. To create his exclusively business class offering, he gutted a Boeing 767 and gave it a complete refi t, removing standard issue seating for 300 passengers and replacing it with 100 custom-made seats, which transform into luxury 6’3’ fl at beds. It’s an irony not lost on him.

With the world seemingly waking up to the consequences of its wasteful, disposable ways, is this not the airborne equivalent of the ‘Chelsea Tractor’? Well no, Hunt insists. Here’s the rub: Silverjet is the world’s fi rst carbon neutral fl yer. At a time when the industry has glare equal to that from the ozone-deprived sun beating down on it you’ve got to admit it looks a PR masterstroke. But does the business have all the answers – and will it take off?

CARVING A NICHE

Hunt engaged with the Carbon Neutral Company, which calculates the amount of CO2 produced by a business. It then enables the business to ‘offset’ its carbon footprint by investing in projects that will reduce this form of pollution, such as renewable energy generation. The assessment of Silverjet found that it will cost roughly 90p for every hour that each passenger flies, offsetting their emissions, and this price has been built into the fare.

Silverjet has pledged to invest the money into global projects to counteract the carbon it releases into the environment, including a scheme to provide villagers in Jamaica with expensive, low-carbon light bulbs.

But with all the media hype surrounding the impact of air travel on climate change, one might expect an airline’s fi nancial obligation to be steeper, when it comes to wiping out its carbon footprint? “That’s what the lentil-eating, sandal-wearing, green brigade would have us believe, that airlines are destroying the planet,” says Hunt, who concedes that air travel plays its part, but that it’s not right or feasible to expect people to stop flying, particularly if you’re running a business. T

his is all starting to sound strangely familiar, but what Hunt can offer that other champions of this argument have not, is a practical solution, and he is hopeful that other airlines will follow suit.

“Instead of saying ‘oh, people should stop fl ying and taking holidays, they should just stay at home and eat lentils all day’, what people like Friends of the Earth should be doing is saying, actually, it only costs 90p an hour per passenger, so please go and visit this website and offset your emissions.”

Determined to encourage others to follow in his carbon offsetting footsteps, instead of a frequent flyer scheme Hunt is rewarding his customers with carbon points when they book a flight. These can be used as currency to invest in projects around the world to help lower global emissions.

Silverjet’s carbon neutral status is just the beginning in a long line of ‘firsts’ achieved by the business. Launched in January, the company has also become the UK’s fi rst low-cost business class airline. But, unlike its economy class counterparts such as easyJet and Ryanair, this is anything but a ‘no frills’ affair. On the contrary, Hunt is promising a ‘private jet’ experience, where passengers go straight into a private lounge on arrival, a concierge takes their luggage away and they are checked in by laptop as they relax.

SHOESTRING BUDGETING

The airline is offering return fl ights between London Luton Airport and New York Newark for an average fare price of £999, compared to an industry average price of between £2,000 and £3,000. So how has he managed to keep the fare price so low while offering so many extras? First, he says, he had to fi nd a feasible business model to fi t with his ideas, which was no easy feat. “The airline business typically competes on one thing: price. So it was very important for us to have a competitive price point, and I felt that the price point we needed to achieve was so low that other airlines wouldn’t even attempt to compete with it.”

To figure out the economics Hunt called on Air Foyle, the airline business that his family has been running for more than 20 years. Air Foyle operates predominantly in the cargo business, but has also worked with the commercial sector, providing airline start-ups such as easyJet with the licences, aircraft and crew it needs to operate. “With a lot of analysis, we were able to come up with a model that allowed us to produce a flat bed, thirty-minute check-in, real business class premium service, for £999, whereas traditional airlines are charging £3,000 – £4,000.”

One of the chief ways that Hunt has managed to offer such a competitive fare is by focusing on one type of aircraft, one type of route, in one configuration, which is the same model as other low-cost carriers. This dramatically reduces the cost of operating, he insists. “BA has more than 20 different types of aircraft in its fleet, and every aircraft needs the whole infrastructure around it: engineering, safety, parts and so on, so you replicate all of those costs in your business every time you bring a new type of aircraft in.”

Hunt admits to being quite ruthless with costs in order to keep the fare price low, foregoing flashy offices and the extravagances that other chief executives might splash out on. “We don’t even have a stationery cupboard, we steal all our stationery from our ad agency,” he says with a smile, but a quick glance at his pen pot suggests this might just be true.