16: Ascent Aviation CEO David Querio on elevating through underserved markets

David Querio joins the podcast to share his remarkable journey from airplane mechanic to CEO of Ascent Aviation Services, and what he learned about managing teams in an industry with no room for error. The 2024 Vistage Member Excellence Award winner also talks with CEO Sam Reese about how out-of-the-box thinking fueled his company’s growth, transforming Ascent Aviation into a major player in aircraft maintenance, modification and storage. David shares lessons learned from hiring 300 new employees in 30 days — and why he’s still passionate about being an airplane “geek” after 40 years in the business.

Key takeaways and reflection questions

Adaptability is crucial: Be ready to evolve your business processes and culture as your company grows. Flexibility can be a significant advantage in navigating rapid changes.

• REFLECT: Are there processes in place that need to be revisited as your company has grown?

Capitalize on market opportunities: Identifying and focusing on underserved market segments, like Ascent Aviation did with aircraft leasing companies, can provide a substantial growth avenue.

• REFLECT: Are there untapped segments in your industry that you could target more effectively?

Maintain a strong organizational culture as you scale: Rapid expansion can challenge your company’s culture. Proactively manage this by integrating new hires and maintaining core values.

• REFLECT: Does your team understand the purpose behind the processes, strategy, and values that are in place?

Emphasize quality and reliability: Prioritizing quality builds trust with customers and sets your company apart from competitors.

• REFLECT: How do you ensure your company’s values are integrated into the day-to-day culture?

Stay accessible and nimble: Keeping lines of communication open with customers — no matter the size of your company — fosters trust and responsiveness.

• REFLECT: Do you have a process in place to receive customer feedback?

Learn from Peer Networks: Engaging with peer advisory groups can provide new perspectives, support and strategic insights that are invaluable during periods of growth or crisis.

• REFLECT: Who can you turn to for objective advice?

Leverage mentorship: Seek mentors who can guide you through the complexities of leadership. Their experience can help you avoid pitfalls and accelerate your growth.

• REFLECT: Do you have a sounding board that can challenge your perspective?

Pursue continuous improvement: Regularly question and refine your business processes to ensure ongoing growth and avoid stagnation.

• REFLECT: Is there a safe way for employees to share feedback?

Establish a long-term vision: Taking time to step away from the day-to-day operations and carve out a long-term vision for your business will give your team confidence and clarity in the company’s direction.

• REFLECT: How frequently do you carve out time to work on long-term strategy?

Transcript

David Querio: For a 60-day period, we were the third busiest inbound traffic airport in Arizona with zero departures. We were actually staging airplane arrivals every 14 minutes. It was an orchestra, let’s put it that way. We had really developed a pretty solid culture of compliance, communication and openness and all of a sudden, we brought 300 people from across the industry who had other cultures and other beliefs. So it really flexed our culture pretty heavily.

Sam Reese: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of “A Life of Climb” podcast. I’m your host, Sam Reese. Joining me today is Dave Querio, President and CEO of Ascent Aviation Services. Dave, thanks for joining us.

David Querio: Glad to be here. Sam, good to see you again and excited to sit down and chat with you for a little bit.

Sam Reese: Really appreciate your time. I thought we’d start by just learning a little bit more about the business at Ascent Aviation Services. So for most of us who fly commercial, we don’t really get to see all the incredible work going on behind the scenes with the aircraft. Take us inside the day-to-day of what you all do and some of the customers you serve.

David Querio: We are a heavy maintenance modification integrator, storage facility and ultimately at the end of the life of the aircraft reclamation facility for all transport category aircraft, which basically means if you fly it commercially, we maintain it. So from the smallest regional 50 seat regional jets all the way up through the largest jumbo jets, both passenger and freighter. We’re based here in Marana, Arizona with a satellite operation in Tucson, Arizona at Tucson International Airport. We service air carriers from across the globe and we service the growing population of aircraft leasing companies, which approximately 60% of aircraft operated out there today are owned by aircraft leasing companies similar to your automobile leases.

Journey from airplane mechanic to CEO

Sam Reese: You have been in the business 40 years, so take us back to 1984, your first day in this industry, and tell us a little bit about this journey and how you got here today.

David Querio: Yeah, it’s been a crazy ride, Sam. It really has, and I’ve been very blessed to have some great mentors along the way. I started while I was in college; my son had just been born, and I needed a part-time job to help raise him. So I started on with a small regional airline as the very entry-level data entry clerk at night and found that I loved airplanes and started working my way up, moved into planning and gained an interest to become more of a mechanical side. So I started working on the floor and my free time to build up my time to, that’s required by the FAA to get testing. I tested for my airframe and power plant license, which is a mechanics license to be able to work both the aircraft and the engines and receive that license in 1992.

One thing I’ve always learned is [to] find somebody who is willing to take the time and be a mentor to you and then keep your mouth shut, your ears open, and be a sponge and just learn from their vast amount of experience. And I’ve been blessed, like I said, to have some of the industry’s greatest as mentors in the past. Never passed up raising my hand and saying, yeah, I’m your guy. Let’s do this, and I’ll volunteer for anything, which has taken me around the globe a few times. I was COO of the Marana facility in the early 2000s and then moved to our Tucson facility in 2004 until we sold it in 2013, and I’ve been back since 2016 as President and CEO.

Sam Reese: Are you still capable — I don’t know if I have the right vernacular — looking under the hood of an airplane? Are you still capable of doing — do you still have [the] skills to do that? I would imagine that gives you a ton of credibility with the team when you walk the shop floor.

David Querio: It does, but I’m probably the one person you don’t want me out there working because our budgets will be blown. And it’s been a number of years since I actively twisted a wrench. One of my favorite things to do is get out there and do things that our people won’t expect me to do. So if they’re out there wiping down the grime off of the belly of an airplane, I’ve been known to do that in the come out in the middle of the night and work with them and I turn around and the whole crew’s looking at me working and I’m like, what are you doing? Get to work. And they’re like, no, we’re amazed watching you do this. And, of course, they love critiquing my work after.

How mentors shaped leadership perspective

Sam Reese: You talked about some mentors that you’ve had. How did some of those mentors shape your leadership and the way you approach your job every day? How did that help?

David Querio: I was ignorant to leadership when I first stepped into leadership, so I thought my way was the right way and along the way you struggle and you end up getting counseled by your boss on, “Hey, maybe you should try this attack or that attack.” My parents raised me to be a very considerate individual: direct, honest, show integrity.

From that standpoint, I’ve evolved to a point where I focus on finding people [who] have common interests and managerial styles as I do and are considerate to not just our employees and all of our team members but to our customers who are also our extended team members. And not only does it offer credibility with our team that I have the maintenance background, but certainly with our customers that I’m going there and I’m not just talking the talk, but I can walk the walk with them.

Sam Reese: I would think that is a huge area that, if I was a customer, would give me so much comfort to know that you’ve actually experienced what that work is like. I just think that’s terrific. This industry you’re in. When I think about your industry, it just has incredible pressure. There’s actually zero room for error in a lot of the work that you do. And I just wondered what are some of the strategies you’ve learned to manage and thrive as a leader in such a high-stress environment.

David Querio: One of the things my management style has put into place, and it’s across the board, is if you see something that you question, you stop. You ask questions, and let’s err on the side of conservatism and make sure things are being done absolutely correctly and safely. And I pride myself in knowing that my team has that same level of responsibility ingrained in them in their culture. I feel comfortable. I won’t release an airplane if I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire family on that airplane because in reality, they could be at some point in time. I’ve had the unfortunate experience early on in my career in 1986, the airline that I had started with in ’84 crashed a regional turboprop, and six people lost their lives in that crash. And to this day, I can tell you the tail number, the flight number, the time it crashed, [and] the names of the people [who] passed away because that was my making or breaking point in aviation. I was in it for two years, still very impressionable. I could have easily just said, you know what? I’m not risking this again. But I dedicated my career to improving the safety of our industry and being as much of a leader [on] that front as I possibly could be.

Capitalizing on growth opportunities

Sam Reese: One of the strategies you’ve credited for your success is finding and focusing on this untouched part of your market with the leasing companies that you mentioned earlier; I think you said 60% of the aircraft now by leasing companies. Take us deeper there. How did you guys find this white space and how did you maximize this opportunity?

David Querio: When I was running our Tucson facility back in 2009, at the time, there were 52 leasing companies in the world, and they were virtually all of them, with the exception of two [that] were based in Ireland. We noticed that whenever an aircraft that was coming off of lease, we were really getting three touchpoints. We were getting the customer that was returning the aircraft and the maintenance that they were required as part of the lease conditions. We were getting the leasing company, and we were getting the leasing company’s new lessor, and they didn’t argue and debate about pricing as much as they did on a scheduled, on-time delivery because they made commitments to their new lessees and they had to deliver that aircraft. So I started making regular trips to Dublin and Shannon meetings and just cold calling leasing companies and got more rejections the first year than I got acceptances.

And I’d go typically three or four times a year and spend three, four days there trying to get 10 or 12 visits. We were fortunate enough to break the ice with a leasing company that, to this day, is still one of our customers and that’s Orix. What I didn’t realize at the time was that once you broke through with one of ’em, the dominoes would fall. There’s such a tight group of people, chief technical officers of a number of these leasing companies get together every Wednesday for a pint at one of the pubs in Dublin and they start talking and before you know it, if your name comes up and the good side you’re getting, the doors are opening next time you go to Dublin for meetings with a number of other leasing companies.

And to this day, we service over 60 leasing companies. There’s over 150 globally now. We’re proud to say we have over 60 of those as regular customers.

Staying in close communication with customers

Sam Reese: From a former sales guy, that’s where I started my career to hear that you’d made it by knocking on doors. I love to hear that. But the connection of your tenacity and then at the same time that whole leasing business was growing, as you said to go, what a great opportunity for you guys and that’s been really key to your success. What’s the thing they value most when you think about the leasing companies? Is it just the reliability of, you’re saying the schedule? What do they value most when they look at your business?

David Querio: There’s probably three things I would say that they value most. Obviously the first is schedule. Second is quality that they’re going to take an aircraft from us after we maintain it and their customer is not going to have any problems. It’s going to be a solid airplane that’s going to go out there and make their customer money from day one. And then I think the thing that really set us apart early on, and to this day it still holds true, is they can pick up the phone and call me no matter what position I hold, if I’m a janitor, pick up the phone and call me and if I don’t have the answer, I’ll bird dog it down. I’ll get them the answer. So we’re very nimble and very flexible in our organization. Our leasing company customers, yeah, they know they can pick up the phone and dial me, my chief operating officer, my chief commercial officer, even my CFO. If they have a problem and they’re going to get an audience, we’re not always going to tell them what they want to hear, but we’re honest with them and we tell them what they need to hear. They have planning they have to do as well. So we’re a relatively large company with a very small feel when it comes to our hands-on approach.

Lessons learned from rapidly scaling

Sam Reese: It’s a good strategy. Well, I know one of the challenges so many companies have, many of our members have talked about is scaling quickly, and you guys really did that. You went from 80 airplanes in storage to 480 over what kind of time period? How tight was that again?

David Querio: 60 days.

Sam Reese: That is unbelievable. So tell us a little bit: How did you manage that, and what did you learn as a leader navigating that? I mean, it was just incredible growth in such a short period of time.

Maintaining culture through rapid growth

David Querio: So the first thing I’ll define it as is controlled chaos for a period of time. We’re proud to say that we’re on an airfield in Marana that has no commercial service, so the only aircraft coming and going are aircraft that are typically coming and going from our facility for a 60-day period of time. We were the third busiest inbound traffic airport in Arizona, zero departures. We were actually staging airplane arrivals every 14 minutes. It was an orchestra, let’s put it that way. And not only did we bring all those aircraft in, but one of, there’s two things that we really learned from it.

The first one, we brought in 300 technicians in 30 days and trained them up because we needed all those technicians to maintain the increased aircraft we had coming in. And that really flexed our culture because we brought in as many technicians as we had. So we doubled inside technician wise, and we had really developed a pretty solid culture of compliance and communication and openness and that type of thing. And all of a sudden, we brought 300 people from additional people from across the industry [who] had other cultures and other beliefs. So it really flexed our culture pretty heavily because it wasn’t just technicians. We brought in leadership as well.

The second thing that we really learned from it was: No matter how much you think your systems and your processes are solid and in place, they’re not.

And keep evolving, keep growing, keep exploring. What can we do differently is the old adage, what if, ask yourself what if or why? How many times you can to ensure that you’re growing. I believe if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And so we were glad to say yes. We were very methodical on who we said yes to. We turned down some of the biggest players in the industry knowing we would not get any residual maintenance activities once the pandemic settled down and people were returning aircraft to service. So we really looked at each customer and what was our probability of getting downline revenue generated from that customer? And if it was zero, they weren’t on our parking list.

Sam Reese: I can’t imagine that was 60 days because you’re talking about 300 technicians, but across the entire organization there’s people everywhere. In terms of, as you said, new cultures, new ideas, what did that feel like to you in those 60 days? Was it fun? Was it [the] craziest stress of your life? What did it feel like during those 60 days to you?

David Querio: A lot of laughter, a lot of fun, but a lot of my wife will tell you a lot of pulling my hair out at night and she comes from an HR background, so I bounce thoughts off of her at night and thank God she’s a great sounding board for me and helps me put things into perspective more.

Benefits of diverse perspectives

Sam Reese: Yeah, we all need that. I know you’ve got another sounding board in your Vistage peer advisory group, which you’re in, I think about a dozen other CEOs. You’ve been doing it for five years. I know you have [a] great relationship with the Chairs that you work with. You said so many nice things when I got a chance to meet you in D.C., but in what ways has your Vistage group helped you with your decision making as you’ve gone through really this astronomical growth? I mean, what you guys have done is just really unprecedented in so many companies.

David Querio: Vistage has really helped me evolve as a leader and look at things with different sets of glasses on. My group is a very diverse group. You’re right. My Chair, Troy Jacobson, is outstanding, and he’s not just my Chair, but I call him a friend. Vistage has given me the opportunity to show emotion and frustration and compassion and vulnerability where I can’t show that to my team. They’re very supportive. All of the members of my team, we will leave a meeting and if somebody was really feeling vulnerable during that meeting, we’ll be doing individual or group texts back and forth in support of that specific individual. And so it’s a family that, an extended family that we’ve built that I cherish greatly. Vistage has also given me the opportunity to hear numerous different perspectives on different areas of concern or methodologies or how to handle different situations.

And the guest speakers that we get that Troy and Steve Weaver bring in are fabulous and very educational. In D.C., when we were meeting with the [U.S. Chamber of Commerce], we had a guest speaker who really educated us heavily on A.I. And before that, I could barely spell A.I. I know it’s something that’s coming. I’m the type of person [who] likes to be ahead of the curve, not chasing the curve and keep our corporate edge as I call it. I’ve put one of my C-suite[s] into a Vistage group with Troy and a mid-level Vistage group with him and emerging leaders. I’m a firm believer in what Vistage is doing, and that was truly reinforced by being blessed enough to be a part of that Vistage on the Hill trip that we did earlier in the month.

Sam Reese: It was just a blast, and it was a blast watching leaders like you in action, this thing we do every year where we head up and meet with the US Chamber and talk about the issues going on with small and mid-size businesses. It just to be able to host you was a treat for me, but just watching leaders like you and really what could have been a pretty high-pressure situation, we’ve got policymakers right there in the room providing answers that aren’t necessarily in line with our thinking.

But you had some terrific questions and just the demeanor you had was really impressive. I see it in you in this conversation too. I can tell you’re very hard to frazzle. What is it that when you think about your why on when you walk into the office every day, you’re doing this for 40 years, and I know you’re a hardworking guy traveling the world, traveling the globe, what is it that is the thing that motivates you every day when you walk out the door and say, I’ve got another day of work here? Why do you do what you’re doing?

Establishing long-term success

David Querio: One, I love it. I’m one of these geeks after 40 years that I hear a plane flying overhead and I still look up to see what type it is and I’ll look at it. I’ll tell my wife, oh, that’s a 747 operated by Atlas Air And she’ll be like, “You’re nuts.” But it’s the passion I have for the industry. It’s the passion that I have for our team. We’ve got 600-plus team members [who] count on their leadership to be able to ultimately put food on the table for them. So I take that very seriously. Yeah, I wake up in the morning just saying, “We’re going to make a difference. We’re going to be the leader.”

We want to ensure every airplane that goes out of here is solid and safe for Bobby and Mary to get on board to go to Disney or wherever they want to go to. I want all of my team members to know that they have a solid and secure place to call home for the future. And one of the biggest things we did there was we just recently signed a big contract with Israel Aircraft Industries, which is a multi-year contract to modify passenger aircraft into freighters, which will give basically a 15-year runway on work. So it gives these people a place that they now can comfortably call home and not have to worry if there’s going to be business coming in or not.

Staying curious

David Querio: I got to put my nose in everything I can. I’m kind of like my German shepherd. He’s roaming around and just sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. And I’m a firm believer you have to learn something new every day, and you’re not going to do that by sitting in your office looking at a spreadsheet or writing a memo or anything to that effect. I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to, but managing by walking around is a very effective means to get people to talk to you and learn what’s going on, what needs to be focused on in your business as you’re growing.

Sometimes you lose focus on certain things, and you think you’re working on the most important thing, but maybe you’re not. So it takes multiple perspectives to really identify what it is and what it takes. I mentioned it earlier, the “what if” and the why’s are common words that come out of my mouth because not only do I want to learn, but I want people to think deeply and understand why are they doing it and not just because the piece of paper says to do it, but why are you doing it in the bigger picture of things? How does this pan out and how does this contribute to the overall success of the organization?

Sam Reese: If there’s any other advice you have for other leaders out there. I know you’ve got a lot of humility. You don’t like to just give advice, but you have so much wisdom on what you’ve learned on your journey. Is there any other things you might want to share with our listeners out there that we haven’t covered yet?

David Querio: Yeah, I mean, obviously besides joining a CEO network, preferably with Vistage of course, and getting that multi-leader dimension to you, a couple of key focus points are via sponge: Listen, learn at no time should anybody ever believe that they know it all in that their way is the best way. There’s always better ways that this whole world we live in is continuously evolving more and more into technology, and there’s stuff we’ll never understand in my lifetime. I’m hoping that it’s a great world for my kids and my grandkids as we move forward.

So leadership Vistage has been by far one of the smartest decisions I ever made when I joined it, and one of the greatest benefits to my management experiences and career. And I would encourage anybody to get into it no matter what level they are. Get into something where you’re working on yourself with others and never stop being philanthropic and giving back wherever you can, whether that’s with time, volunteering, networking, being there for your people, and give the time to let them learn about them and their spouses or their significant others, and you’re going to be just fine.

Sam Reese: So great. Listen, learn. Don’t be a know-it-all. Be open to better ways. Stay philanthropic, give back, and continue to care about people and learn about them. Great summary. Thank you for that, Dave. Clearly, those are key tenets of your success. Thanks for joining us for this edition of A Life of Climb podcast. Friendly reminder to please subscribe or follow the podcast to get all the latest episodes, and please visit vistage.com for more resources to support you on your leadership journey.

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