About Tom

Tom Ronell has a record of worldwide innovation and success. Tom began his career in transportation pumping Shell gas and working nights, weekends and summers as a Toll Collector on the New Jersey Turnpike while attending The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a degree in Economics.

After a year and a half selling computer software, Tom got his big break, obtaining a job as the budget and administrative officer of the Maintenance & Engineering division of Northwest Airlines in Minneapolis, where he learned where every penny and labor man-hour was being expended in the company, and how to optimize them.

Tom joined McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, California, as a Financial Analyst and was promoted to Manager of Commercial Marketing in Europe when his innovative financial analyses proved effective in selling aircraft against the gee-whiz payload/range and fuel burn charts which were the favored sales tools of the time, for which he was credited with significant roles in major sales such as 260 MD-80 aircraft to American Airlines.

Always one to surf the wave of the future (and being able to take a hint when his work to sell the 260 MD-80s, which was said to have saved the Douglas Aircraft Company’s commercial aircraft division at the time, landed him a job in the basement as an analyst on the US Air Force C-17 cargo airlifter program), Tom’s auspicious first day of work at Airbus Industrie was also the day that the A320 program was launched. He played a leading role in Airbus’ breaking into the North American market and, at the age of 32, was promoted to the position of Vice President of Sales of the team which sold $50 billion worth of aircraft, a surprising total in its time, to a market in which most people considered selling Airbus aircraft tantamount to selling refrigerators to Eskimos.

Tom has participated in a variety of groundbreaking projects around the world, beginning with the launch of the first western-style business airline in the Soviet Union, Transaero, and placement of the first Boeing aircraft in Russia and Turkmenistan, provision of aircraft, training and technical support to several airlines in the Commonwealth of Independent States and consulting services which supported their success. Tom incorporated Ronell Aviation, Inc., “The Airline Builders”®, at the suggestion of legendary American Airlines Chairman Robert L. Crandall, who had taken the $5 billion of MD-80s and then was the launch customer for the A300-600R with a $3.5 billion order. That order was considered by many to be the “coming of age” for Airbus, at least in North America, which is 50% of the world market for commercial airliners. Ronell Aviation assisted American in the sale and disposition of B737s which AA inherited when it purchased Air California. For a salesperson, there is no better endorsement than the customer who helped save one company and whose order signaled the coming of age of the next company, subsequently inviting you to represent the customer. This positive relationship continues with Tom’s status as a 5.5 million-mile Lifetime Platinum on American Airlines (he has also accrued 3.5 million miles on Continental Airlines which, like American, obtained both MD-80s and A300s from Tom, who believes strongly that loyalty is earned on a two-way street.)

[Click on any photo to enlarge.]

Ilyushin-18 Mogadishu departure

Since then, Tom has participated in the start-up, privatization, restructuring and fleet decisions of airlines as varied as AeroRepublica (Colombia), Air Aruba, Air Philippines, Balkan Bulgarian Airlines, Copa Airlines (Panama), Daallo Airlines (Djibouti), Florida Coastal Airlines (USA), Pluna (Uruguay), Skybus (USA), SpiceJet (India), Sunny Airways (Thailand),  Transaero (Russia), Turkmenistan Airlines and has presented business plans and fleet proposals to airlines around the world. He has represented investment banks and aircraft lessors in transactions. In addition, Tom organized and managed in the movement of teams and fans from Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, Netherlands and U.K. during the 1994 World Cup games which were held at various locations in USA. He was involved in the planning for an eco-tourist resort in Belize and planning for the metro-monorail in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Tom was CEO of a $1.5 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund which invested in, managed and turned around aviation businesses including airlines, airports, maintenance organizations and lessors. While in this role, Tom was a Director on the Executive Committee of SpiceJet, on the Investment Committee of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, the Board of SR Technics and was Executive Director of IWA Executive Jets, a luxury private jet service serving the royalty, corporate and celebrity market of Dubai, while simultaneously being at the other end of the spectrum as Chairman of Daallo Airlines, serving the Horn of Africa (Dubai, London and Paris to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen) – of which Tom is proud to have participated in turning from losses to profits while oil was spiking to $147 per barrel and providing a lifeline flying to six cities in Somalia, including Mogadishu, with fleet ranging from B757 to Antonov-24 and 42 year-old Ilyushin-18 operated by Kazakh pilots.

(That’s the historic Ilyushin IL-18, registration UP-1802, in the photo at the top of the page. Read about its history in the post “About the Aircraft in the Photo Above”.)

Tom has been approved and accepted as the Accountable Manager, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board of Directors by eight different national aviation safety oversight regulatory authorities on five continents and sub-continent, a truly unusual accomplishment. Ever versatile and adaptable, Tom has worked on six of the seven continents on earth, plus Oceania, but has not yet obtained a job in Antarctica to claim all seven.

Mongolia: coaxing camels off the gravel runway is part of the First Officer’s job description. But the Mongolian camels seem to be fascinated by this blonde creature from Sweden.

 

CAT-1 Approach

         

Among unusual accomplishments, Tom has repossessed both automobiles and aircraft, some of which have been daring capers worthy of an episode of the original “Mission: Impossible!”, including being accused of “…having stolen a Boeing 767 aircraft from the gate at Suvarnabhumi International Airport [Bangkok], under cover of darkness…” Thailand was under martial law and is not a signatory to the Cape Town Convention, an international treaty which governs the matter of mobile assets. Imagine a leading politician and ministerial official, as chairman of the airline, calling the local police station to report, “My Boeing 767 has been stolen” from the major international hub airport. The charge is actually sort of an insult: to “steal” a B767 from a major international hub airport – at prime time – requires elaborate planning and meticulous execution (along with immediate, clever and highly risky extemporaneous improvisation in response to unexpected contingencies), not climbing over the fence “under cover of darkness.”

After nearly three years, the Government of Thailand dropped the case and all charges in respect of the “stolen” B767, due to the owner of the aircraft having won a civil lawsuit in which another Thai judge ruled that the lease was invalid before the date of the repossession – therefore, how could the aircraft have been “stolen” from the airline; it was just being returned to its rightful owner, albeit without the agreement of anybody in Thailand. Oh, well, it does make Tom an interesting person at the cocktail party, since most people have not met somebody who is accused of “having stolen a Boeing 767.”

Since the return of the B767, Tom has been involved in a variety of projects. Among the notable ones, he was retained as a part-time, temporary consultant to help stem losses at a private jets service and aircraft maintenance center at Baden-Baden, Germany. The owner said that he was not asking for profits, just “Please make it stop costing me so much money.” Tom was appointed Managing Director & Accountable Manager of the private jets service after seven months and Accountable Manager of the aircraft maintenance center after two years, leading the transformation from significant losses to solid profits, with little additional investment required, by streamlining the business and empowering staff. He repaired a frayed relationship with authorities (imagine your first meeting, introducing yourself to Luftfahrt Bundesamt, the German aviation safety oversight authority, in a room being yelled at for two hours – in German – including “Tell us why we should not revoke your license right now?”) Both the private jets service and the aircraft maintenance center gained reputations for superb quality and service, growing a repeat customer base for both AOC & MRO and turning these two moribund high-loss businesses into vibrant, growing, solid profit-makers.

Always the person to be in the right spot at the right time, early in the SARS CoV-2 pandemic Tom participated in the restructure & transformation of Volga-Dnepr Group which includes Volga-Dnepr Airlines, AirBridgeCargo, CargoLogicAir UK, CargoLogicGermany and Atran Airlines. This involved issues including restructuring of the operational fleet of An-124, IL-76TD, B747-8F, B747-400ERF, B777-200LRF, B737-800BCF, B737-400SF, support of negotiations with manufacturers and lessors plus various operational projects such as freighter conversions, lease conversions and the VDG vaccine task force. Tom is proud to have been there when this unique group of companies was turned from struggling to earning massive profits while playing a major role in the pandemic and the spectacular growth of e-commerce.

In addition to such daring feats of applied justice as described above, such as operating the lifeline to/from Mogadishu and the “stolen” B767, Tom has interdicted millions worth of drugs hidden on aircraft in attempts to gain transport to market. Tom has, so far, been to 127 countries during his swashbuckling career, including 15 of the 25 “least visited countries on earth” and has been thrown out of places of which you have probably never heard. Yes, he has been to Timbuktu ….

                                                                                                  Aviation legends-in-the-making