This Plane for Hire

While studying at Chicago's Roosevelt University in the early 1960s, James L. Johnson landed a part-time job with an aircraft-financing firm and became entranced with flying. By the time he was 23, he was vice president in charge of a new leasing operation established by the finance company, which was owned by his father-in-law, Chicago Jeweler Burton Greenfield. The leasing business climbed steadily until it operated a fleet of 60 light planes out of its headquarters in Northbrook, Ill. Still, the young boss was dissatisfied. Aiming to make the company into a Hertz of the skies, Johnson set out three years ago to establish the first chain of franchised rent-a-plane stations across the country.

That operation has been hampered by a lack of capital, and though it is by no means out of the clouds, the visibility of late has markedly improved. Johnson's company--Lease-A-Plane International--had revenues of $3,500,000 from operations and sales of used aircraft last year, and it has recently moved into the black. Most important, it has just closed a deal to lease $5.5 million worth of new planes this year from Trans Union Corp., a Chicago-based conglomerate that specializes in leasing railroad tank cars.

Right Identity. With this boost, Johnson, who is now the firm's president at the age of 29, hopes to expand his franchised locations from the present eleven to as many as 30 by year's end. Lease-A-Plane has stations spanning from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Van Nuys, Calif. Last week it opened stations in St. Louis and Columbus. From each franchise operator, the company gets a $10,000 fee and a 5% annual royalty on gross revenues. Lease-A-Plane supplies the aircraft, but each local operator must put up $50,000 to $75,000 within a year to buy an equity on a fleet of about eight Cessnas, Pipers and Beeches.

There are 733,000 licensed pilots in the U.S. and 129,000 light aircraft available for them to use. Most of the pilots cannot afford to buy a plane, and renting them is not always easy. Outside of Lease-A-Plane, the aircraft-rental field is a crazy quilt of widely varying rates, generally casual maintenance and erratic availability of aircraft. Says Johnson, a moderately mod dresser who has the jut-jawed good looks favored in old Smilin' Jack cartoons: "We had to get away from the image of the guy in the leather jacket sitting around a potbelly stove at the airport. We wanted to streamline and standardize our operations so that the businessmen who used Hertz or Avis could identify with us."

Johnson put his station attendants into blue-and-gold uniforms, standardized the instrument panels of his varying kinds of planes and set a rate structure that is not far off from that of a car-rental firm. The most inexpensive plane, a Cessna 150, rents for $13 a day and 13-c- a mile. For traveling businessmen who cannot fly themselves, Johnson will put on a pilot for another 5-c- a mile. To drum up business, Lease-A-Plane mails its own credit cards to all licensed pilots in each station's area.

Johnson occasionally uses flamboyant promotion. His company's slogan, emblazoned on advertising signs and TV commercials, is "Go Fly Yourself." A buxom hostess with the all-too-obvious name of Lisa (pronounced Lease-a) has turned up in newspaper offices and at station openings to give away Red Baron flying helmets and buttons with the company slogan. For all its flair and standardization, Lease-A-Plane does not paint its aircraft in distinguishing colors. Explains Johnson: "If a businessman wants to rent one of our planes and then try to bull his customers into believing that it is his plane, that's his right."

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