Roush purchases small charter airline fleet

By Mike Fish, CNNSI.com
April 18, 2001
3:47 PM EDT (1947 GMT)

Jack Roush is as shrewd a businessman as any race-team owner. So when a guy who fancies himself as being on the sport's cutting edge buys a small charter airline, you have to wonder what he’s up to.

Driver safety is what Roush had in mind when he purchased the three jets.

See, Roush didn't go shopping for just a corporate jet to ferry his teams' drivers and crew chiefs from race to race.

No, no.

Roush struck a deal with an Indiana billionaire who was looking to unload his charter service, acquiring his fleet of three 727 jets and retaining three veteran pilots. The sale price is said to be a bargain -- estimated to be in the $5 million to $6 million range --but the operating cost won’t be cheap, unless the boss can find a way to make a buck off Air Roush.

And that's a possibility.

Plans call for only one of the jets to transport Roush Racing's four Winston Cup and one Busch team. Another is being offered to charter other Cup race teams. The third might also be made available for charter or even sold.

The planes were built as luxury charters for professional sports teams and corporate junkets, thus seat only 50. The Roush team is currently using one of the planes. But to make them more cost efficient, Roush is converting them to seat 90, all business-class.

The 727s are white with a blue tail and blue and gold striping. On the tail is a gold silhouette of Jack Roush and his trademark seagrass fedora.

"We're letting other [race teams] look at it and our model, to see whether they want to buy into the program," said Geoff Smith, president of Roush Racing. "If people do the math and see how their costs are escalating, the comfort issue, getting home in a hurry, and are willing to bundle up with other teams, then this would be good program.

"The model has already proven because there are services in place where multiple teams bundle up together and go. This is the same kind of service except this plane isn't subject to any other schedule. That is what drove us crazy. Guys are ready to come home and you run into delays."

Roush's drivers include Jeff Burton and Mark Martin.

In a sport where the top teams are flush with money, private jets are as common as a Sunday afternoon yellow flag. But nobody is flying around in anything the size of a commercial airliner.

The rush to the skies came a decade ago with expansion of the Winston Cup schedule and growing money in the sport. It was common until then for teams to travel by van to races or, if necessary, on commercial flights. The drivers often were the only ones traveling by private plane.

"We lost a lot of time from the race shops by having people gone all the time, just getting to and from races," Smith said.

The answer for most teams has been to book charter flights, which is more efficient but also costly.

Roush Racing, alone, spent almost $2 million a year on air travel.

On a typical race weekend before this season, it contracted for six small planes and 12 pilots. About 50 team members and marketing staff traveled to the race site on Thursday, while another 50 flew on race day. Half of the group returned after the race on the private planes and the rest were booked on large charters shared with other race teams.

Now, a commercial-size jet shuttles some of the team to the race on Thursday and the rest on Sunday. And everyone boards the return flight soon after the race’s conclusion.

And there’s a safety factor, too.

"We didn't like the long-term safety probability of small-plane charters," Smith said. "Typically, all the pilots are very competent, but this isn't the final job that a lot of these pilots would want to have. We went out and hired the crew that was with the other airline. So our lead pilot has got over 10,000 hours of 727 experience.

"The planes are very fast, extremely safe and it's going to cost us maybe 20 percent more than the other option would have cost. That extra 20 percent puts us in control and we know what the cost is going to be five years from now."