When we pull up to the Wonderful Aviation hangar at 8 a.m., they have already flown four aircraft movements out of 14 on the schedule. One shift – pilots, maintenance and schedulers – started before dawn, another will come on soon and a third will finish the day around 9 p.m.
“And today is a light day,” Vice President of Flight Operations Matt Daglish says with a laugh. “The King Airs, our workhorses, it’s not unusual for them to fly 10 legs in a day. Each.”
Wonderful flies three Beechcraft King Airs, two Cessna Caravans, a Pilatus PC-12 NGX, a Citation XLS+ and a Gulfstream G280. Five different airframes. Seven are based at Meadows Field Airport (BFL) in Bakersfield, CA, with one King Air in McAllen, TX, serving the Texas and Mexico citrus operation.
“We’re like a mini airline, moving thousands of people every year.”
Matt Daglish Vice President of Flight Operations, The Wonderful Company
“When you think about our flight department, shoulder-to-shoulder with other Fortune 500 companies, what makes us different is we’re an agriculture company, we cover a lot of land,” said Daglish. “It’s the volume and pace of the mission, with safety always top of mind. We’re like a mini airline, moving thousands of people every year.”
The Wonderful Company’s portfolio of iconic, healthy brands includes POM Wonderful pomegranate juice, Wonderful Pistachios, Teleflora and FIJI Water. It is also America’s largest citrus grower.
Everyone on Wonderful Aviation’s maintenance team is encouraged to take specialized classes and share what they learn with the team.
Heartbeat of the Team
Supporting every Wonderful brand and business unit, the flight department has carried more than 5,000 different passengers – often between tiny farming towns. And the schedule is constantly changing, with employees in states all over the U.S. and several countries, open seating and no limit on who can travel on the aircraft for work.
“The schedule is like a 1,000-piece puzzle, and we just take it apart and put it together again. That’s what my team does, constantly.”
Samantha Garrison Director of Flight Coordination, The Wonderful Company
“We fly an incredible number of hours, and it’s an awesome opportunity to see all that we can do for the company,” says Samantha Garrison, director of flight coordination. “The schedule is like a 1,000-piece puzzle, and we just take it apart and put it together again. That’s what my team does, constantly.”
Everyone at Wonderful Aviation agrees that scheduling is the heartbeat of the team.
The challenge is that the aircraft are so highly utilized, and each serves a unique mission. The Gulfstream can reach customers on the East Coast when the citrus team needs to meet with market buyers.
As the workhorses of the operation, the King Airs fly many legs per day, short hauls between Wonderful orchards up and down California’s Central Valley. This is Wonderful Aviation’s “valley shuttle,” offered three days a week.
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“Aviation has been a total game-changer for us. Our growth has taken off since joining The Wonderful Company.”
Stephanie Senner Senior director of Marketing, Suterra
All Because of Aviation
The Citation often flies a different shuttle route to vineyards and ranches in Northern California. It can also reach growers in Washington state and the Suterra laboratory in Bend, OR. Suterra is a Wonderful company that produces sustainable alternatives to traditional pesticides.
“To visit an apple grower using commercial airlines, it would take me hours to drive to Portland, get a flight and rent a car to wherever,” says Stephanie Senner, senior director of marketing at Suterra.
Suterra manufactures devices that use pheromones to interrupt the mating cycles of pests without affecting pollinators. The aircraft are essential for making sure that engineers can get transportation to the fields, where they work alongside growers to improve Suterra’s products.
“Aviation has been a total game-changer for us,” says Senner. “Our growth has taken off since we’ve had access to Wonderful Aviation.” Every year, she sends a handwritten note to Wonderful Aviation saying, “This is all because of you: that my people can get out there and meet these growers.”
“The places we grow are so remote and spread out, we double the time that we are able to spend in the field, over flying commercial.”
Alex Montoya Senior Vice President of Texas and Mexico, Wonderful Citrus
Flexible Shuttles
The third shuttle – the McAllen-based King Air – flies to Monterrey, Mexico, and to orchards across 10 Mexican states where Wonderful grows lemons and limes.
“We’re traveling every week, moving between the different growing regions: Veracruz, Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí,” says Alex Montoya, senior vice president of Texas and Mexico for Wonderful Citrus. “The places we grow are so remote and spread out, we double the time that we are able to spend in the field, over flying commercial.”
From the Bakersfield base, the two Caravans perform a surprising dual mission. “The biggest advantage of the Caravans is they can get into smaller airstrips, like Dudley Ridge where we have pomegranates,” says Garrison. “They can inspect the orchards, get back in the plane and go.”
That is what the team calls the Caravan’s “utility mission,” doing farm tours, but they have recently discovered the aircraft – the smallest and only unpressurized model in the fleet – can also be used for executive transport.
“It’s a cost-saving endeavor,” explains Garrison. “The cost difference of running the Caravan, it’s allowed us to do pop-up trips with only one or two individuals, and save money in the process. To be not only highly efficient, but also highly effective for our passengers.”
The Wonderful Company's aviation department is focused on its safety culture and its SMS.
Safety Is Top of Mind
Wonderful Aviation calls these operations “flexible shuttles,” because they fly a predictable route (e.g., departing Bakersfield at 7 a.m., stopping in Lost Hills, Fresno and Delano), but Garrison’s team constantly rearranges the stops and adjusts the schedule based on passenger needs.
“Samantha’s team builds the whole schedule, and then one passenger comes along with a change, and we have to rebuild the whole day,” says Daglish. “It’s a lot of horse trading. We may be able to take them to Lost Hills, but not Paso Robles. If there’s only three passengers, we’ll ask them to find anybody else going to Fresno [to be more cost effective]. It’s absolutely magic, what scheduling does.”
When one crew is nearing the end of their duty day, another flight crew will drive 45 minutes from Bakersfield to Delano, meet the airplane and take the rest of the shuttle route.
Wonderful Aviation holds itself to strict crew-duty limits and flies every airplane with two pilots, although the turboprops are certified for single-pilot operations. “We’re really focused on our safety culture, we’re working hard to solidify our SMS,” says Daglish. “Every pilot remains 12 months current on every airplane they fly. Most are on two airframes, so they’re going to school every six months. Our maintenance technicians also go to training twice a year.”
Director of Maintenance John Hufford gives his technicians the freedom to take more specialized classes, beyond the two-week familiarization course, such as four days on avionics or cabin systems, then come back and teach the other three technicians what they have learned.
The newest addition to the fleet is the PC-12, which can access short airfields like the Caravan, but with pressurization and greater range. For major inspections, they take it to Cutter Aviation at Sky Harbor, near the Gulfstream and Textron service centers in Mesa, AZ, making Phoenix a convenient maintenance hub for the Wonderful fleet.
Keeping a close relationship with all these repair shops helps the maintenance team oversee such a diverse fleet. “If we see something and don’t necessarily have the answer, we can pick up the phone and call those contacts,” says Hufford, “and that has helped us a lot in learning the airframes.”
Nosewheel Briefings and Tail Cone Debriefs
Wonderful Aviation is always looking for ways to improve safety, from major projects, such as revamping their SMS or working with The VanAllen Group to benchmark against other flight departments, to everyday items like placing safety cones inside the hangar to avoid injuries.
One initiative that emerged out of their safety focus: nosewheel briefings before every flight and tail cone debriefs after.
“We wanted everybody to work as a cohesive team when we’re departing,” says Vice President of Flight Operations Matt Daglish. “To have the pilots, maintenance and scheduling meet in the scheduling office and have a briefing.”
Departments share any notes they might have for the flight. “Maintenance gives a thumbs-up on the aircraft, any MELs [minimum equipment lists] or other concerns,” explains Daglish. “Maybe scheduling knows of a passenger request or something. The pilots talk about their day, weather, NOTAMs or anything to do with airports.”
Although the briefing is short, it helps the nimble, busy operation stay in sync amid a constantly changing schedule.
“The nosewheel briefing occurs before every flight,” says Samantha Garrison, director of flight coordination. “And then at the end of the day, or if we’re swapping a crew, we do a tail cone, which is basically: How did it go? Is there anything we need to address?”
Snapshot
Aircraft: One Gulfstream G280, one Cessna Citation XLS+, one Pilatus PC-12 NGX, three King Air 250s, and two Cessna Caravans
Base: Headquartered at Meadows Field Airport (BFL) in Bakersfield, CA. One King Air is based in McAllen, TX (MFE).
Personnel: 21 pilots, four maintenance technicians and four schedulers
International Business Aviation Council Ltd.
