For Venari Partners’ first fireside chat at this year’s World Aviation Festival, James Parker spoke to Jude about how his background in the forces influenced his leadership and prepared him for the C-suite in Aviation.
The World Aviation Festival lets us to catch up with familiar faces, make new connections, and get the latest market updates from our extensive network across all strands of aviation. The Talent Summit on Day One gives us a chance to do all three at once – while hearing insights on leadership and strategy from experienced figures in the industry.
It’s become something of a tradition for Venari Partners to host some talks on the opening day. Our Director, James Parker, typically conducts a couple of fireside chats, with Jenny Walsh, Head of Client Relations, moderating panel discussions. James’s first guest on the morning of Tuesday, 8 October, was Sun Country Airlines CEO, Jude Bricker. Their conversation took in Jude’s career, experience, and leadership style filtered through a particular lens: ‘How military service influenced my career in the C-suite’. It’s a topic of no small interest to James, so there was plenty to discuss.
Early experiences
Jude, who grew up in Texas, was part of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programme, studying engineering at Texas A&M University before joining the Marines. He was stationed in Twentyninepalms, California – ‘not the prettiest place to be’, in Jude’s words – prior to two tours of Asia and another land tour of the US. In all, he served with the military for seven years, which gave him a more intense and direct experience of leadership than anything he would have got from going into industry directly after finishing his studies. At 21, Jude was a platoon leader with 42 people reporting directly to him.
‘You learn really early on about counselling, hiring, firing, and public speaking,’ he noted. Not only did military leadership boost Jude’s confidence early on, but the intensity of active service meant that business situations that would be extremely stressful for anyone else seem comparatively more manageable. ‘In the military, it’s life and death, often,’ Jude said. ‘I think it just gives you perspective. [Now], we may have to rebrand or move in a different direction – but it’s industry. It’s not fighting in the trenches.’
Adapting to the professional world
Jude returned to university for his MBA after leaving the Marines. However, while military service can help build resilience in the professional world later down the line, ex-personnel often struggle to adapt to civilian life – and this was the case for Jude, who admits that ‘infantry doesn’t necessarily translate directly.’ He was in his late twenties by the time he first sat in an office cubicle, where it took him ‘two weeks to figure out that it wasn’t going to work.’
He eventually joined Allegiant after unsuccessful stints in engineering, as a trader, and at American Airlines. Allegiant’s smaller size and more hands-on nature certainly appealed to Jude’s practicality: ‘We were kind of inventing it as we went, and that was really, really compelling.’ After numerous leadership roles at Allegiant, Jude joined the Minneapolis-based ultra-low-cost carrier, Sun Country Airlines, as CEO in 2017. ‘It’s quite a successful company – but it wasn’t always that way,’ he noted.
Making changes
When Jude arrived, the company was privately listed and ‘the owners wanted out’. He redirected the business strategy, guiding the company through a buyout by Apollo Global Management and navigating the COVID-19 pandemic before taking Sun Country to IPO in 2021. Things have only gone up from there, with the airline having the highest pre-tax margins for 2023 of any mainline US carrier.
Jude describes Sun Country’s variable capacity model as the organisation’s ‘secret sauce’, with the company operating at two-and-a-half to three times its normal size during particularly busy periods like July and mid-December. This allows them ‘to achieve a much higher unit revenue than our competition, even if we’re flying the same markets, because we’re sort of picking off the best times. We’re able to do that with a really low fixed-cost space.’ Other lines, such as Sun Country’s charter and freighter businesses, provide stability for the organisation to function as a whole. ‘We do about the same volume every day of the year. We use the same crew, so that allows us to peak up and down without the same impact on our base,’ he told James.
Applying military leadership skills
Jude’s early exposure to decision-making and public speaking in a military setting served him well, laying the groundwork for having the mettle to thrive in the C-suite, but it’s often a tricky transition for veterans to make. Quite apart from leadership in camp being very different to white-collar management, Jude believes it’s incumbent on ex-military to train themselves up on skills like Excel that armed service wouldn’t necessarily have provided. As difficult as the change can be, he notes that postgraduate training programmes for former personnel often help to smooth the way – indeed, he’s had ‘a tonne of success with veterans coming into the business.’ Their military backgrounds are often disparate, but a common factor is ‘a higher level of confidence’ and a willingness to tackle issues directly.
This hands-on approach is something Jude brings to the hiring process, too, preferring to recruit talent based on trusted recommendations and references rather than in-person interviews alone. In management, he welcomes ‘a staff meeting where there’s lots of conflict. It’s not dictatorial; I want there to be a discussion’. For Jude, accountability is key; as in the army, ultimately the C-suite is ‘just not about anything other than getting the job done’. He recognised that this philosophy isn’t for everyone, and that his style of management is perhaps better suited to smaller, disruptive companies. His approach seems to be working for Sun Country, anyway, with the airline growing 10% year-on-year.
Looking ahead
After a tough time for the US industry, business travel is back. Fares are growing, fuel prices are comparatively stable, and inflationary pressures on labour have also eased. As such, Jude is ‘really, really positive about going into next year.’ He foresees growth in the cargo space for Sun Country, meaning they won’t have the same pressure to boost their scheduled service offering. In all, he feels ‘bullish’ about prospects for 2025 – and well he should.
Our thanks, once more, to Jude for sharing such valuable insights with us!
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