FlySafair’s Kirby Gordon: ‘Mr Nice Guy’ does a nice fly

He is just an all-round nice guy. Kirby Gordon, head of marketing at one of South Africa’s largest airlines, FlySafair, never seems to let the pressure get to him.

In an environment littered by failed airlines – and there have been several over the past two decades – FlySafair has captured the hearts and minds of South Africans.

And that has been Kirby’s job.

In the past 20 years, SA has seen airlines like Sun Air, 1Time, Skywise, Velvet Sky, SA Express, Kulula, Nationwide, Mango and Comair British Airways park forever. And startups or aspiring aviators are aplenty. Presently there are two airlines, virtual at this time, narrating their daily journeys on social media. After a couple of years, neither has sold a single ticket nor flown a sector.

To get an airline off the ground is not easy.

Safair, the parent company of the airline, has been in aviation for decades. It started off as a company called Tropair in the mid-sixties, changed its name to Safair in 1970, and ended up being acquired by Safmarine, a company whose primary client was the South African Defence Force, in the early ’70s. The company is now owned by Irish-based aviation colossus the ASL Group.

FlySafair, the passenger airline, was launched in 2013.

Strong team

“You really need to assemble a strong team of people who really know what they’re doing,” said Gordon. “It’s not like starting up a coffee shop or something that requires a relatively standard business model that an entrepreneur could embark upon.

“But I don’t think anyone’s going to necessarily walk off the streets and go and buy a mine or, you know, start an engineering firm. And airlines are similar. It’s not as easy as it seems.”

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, is often quoted as saying that to make a million in aviation, you’d have to start off at a billion. Airlines burn cash fast, and it could become a bottomless pit. Therefore, said Gordon, FlySafair maintains a prudent approach to growth.

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Most aviators, whether it’s a pilot or a revenue manager on the commercial side of a carrier, do it for the love of flying.

Gordon similarly loves aviation and said while it is definitely not a means to acquiring great wealth, passion outweighs money in his profession. “Aviation is an amazing game. That’s why it attracts so many different types of individuals – for better or for worse. The people that work in this environment are largely driven by passion because there’s not really a space in which any individual makes a whole lot of money.”

He counts himself among those who have jet fuel pumping through their veins, but it is not completely all consuming. “I am more on the commercial side of aviation so in that sense I am not a classic aviation geek, but I love it.”

And it is a tough job: Gordon, as the designated spokesperson for the airline, is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is always a journalist needing a comment, a marketing campaign or event to run smoothly and, in between all of that, navigating a semblance of a personal life.

Gordon’s office is his second home. It’s painted with calming dark blue and white hues. His desk resembles a work of impressionist art, with here there and everywhere paperwork and notes. And in the centre of it, his computer. It’s spartan, without airs and graces, but clearly a space where he focuses on getting the job done.

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Yoga instructor

To amuse himself, Gordon has amassed a collection of mugs with various slogans, all containing some expletives. It paints a picture of a person whose sardonic sense of humour and work ethic have melded together, probably along with a blurring of the lines of work and play.

“Aviation is a sexy topic of conversation at braais and other social gatherings,” Gordon said.

“And it’s inevitable in most of these instances that the conversation turns to airlines, ticket prices or whatever. And then, when people find out that you work in the industry, your job has suddenly followed you into your private, out-of-office life.”

To combat the blurring of the divide between work and play, Gordon has several hobbies far removed from anything that flies.

He is a qualified yoga instructor, for example. It helps him switch off. “I have just qualified as a yoga teacher. So that’s something that I do for a physical break and for, I guess, a mental break as well,” Gordon said.