If owning one plane is good....

[Skip Miller]

..and owning two is better, who is the best? Who owns more planes than anyone?

Answer: Stephen Udvar-Hazy. Yes, that Udvar-Hazy.
How many? 824 big iron airplanes with 254 more on order. He is the King of Aircraft Leasing, and he has enormous clout with the manufacturers.

Here is a link to an article on him. Front page of the NY Times business section, top center. Hard to get more prominent positioning. He is evidently a private person by choice, avoiding publicity. I always wondered who the man was behind the name on that wonderful museum... now I know. If you don't view this promptly, some login may be required.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/business/10flyboy.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

-Skip

 

[TMetzinger]

I've met him a couple of times at the museum, and I wouldn't call him secretive (that word, to my mind, implies one is hiding something bad), but he is fairly private.

I was told he has a fair number of pilots working for ILFC, including a sort of "repo squad", which sounds like an interesting gig, particularly in some of the places where they have to go to recover airplanes.

 

[Keith Lane]

I think this statement say a LOT.

“Big U.S. carriers, since the dawn of the jet age, act almost like superior beings,” said Mr. Hazy, who said that half his customers sought to re-negotiate leases after 9/11. “They want all the benefits when times are good, but if they are bad, they want you to sacrifice.”

He certainly is a "mover and shaker". Interesting that you never hear anything from him.

 

[jason]

That was a great article. I had no idea. Definitely worth the read...

 

[Skip Miller]

I've met him a couple of times at the museum, and I wouldn't call him secretive (that word, to my mind, implies one is hiding something bad), but he is fairly private.

You are correct, I chose that word poorly. I'll go edit the original post.

-Skip

 

[Rockfly]

Skip, thanks for posting this. Great piece on Udvar-Hazy. I didn't know anything about himother than he donated a lot of money to NASM and they named the new facility after him. The guy is a business genius.

 

[KennyFlys]

...in the case of Airbus, Mr. Hazy pushed to create the A319, one of Airbus’s most successful planes, over the objection of Jean Pierson, the managing director at the time, who wanted to build a bigger plane, not a smaller one.
But, Mr. Hazy, over a glass of wine in Paris in 1993, convinced Mr. Pierson that there was a large market for a small jet and that he would buy the first six.
“He had a glass of wine and said O.K.,” Mr. Hazy said. “Now it’s sold 2,000 planes.”

Any corporate board and upper management who declined this man's advice probably already has contingency plans in case of failure and subsequent bankruptcy.

Maybe I'm overreaching but I'd have to consider this man an "achiever."