Many have heard their names called since May, when airline chair Rev. Raymond Lee, 55, began scattering biz-class tickets like manna among the city's influential. After all, Oasis has 81 such seats, at $1,399 per, on the 747-400 aircraft it has scheduled for six-days-a-week Vancouver-Hong Kong service. There are 278 more in economy class, with tickets from $299.
The airline began daily Hong Kong-London service in 2006.
"For us to introduce a jumbo jet to Vancouver increases [existing] capacity by 40 per cent," Lee said. A Faith Community Church pastor and graduate of Hong Kong's elite Diocesan Boys School and Harvard University, he claimed Oasis will not need to raid other carriers.
That might occur only if transpacific boardings were to remain static. Lee calls that a red ocean strategy, based on analysts and traditional observers seeing no more than 500,000 passengers annually. "But we believe our blue ocean strategy has identified an untapped market we estimate at 1.5 million in five years," he said, meaning those specifically attracted by lower fares as well as the 380,000 ethnic Chinese living in Greater Vancouver and the 250,000 Canadians in Hong Kong.
"The sky's the limit," said wife and Oasis executive director Priscilla Hwang Lee. She's also a New England Conservatory of Music-trained pianist, whose recitals of Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich concertos doubtless accustomed her to thinking big.
The two reportedly own some 60 per cent of Oasis, which has postponed an initial public offering of HK$10 billion ($1.35 billion Cdn) until 2009 or 2020, when it proposes to operate 15 or more aircraft.
As on the London route, economy passengers get reasonable leg room, TV-seatback entertainment and hot meals. But there's no pie in the sky about the Lees' blue-ocean policy for serving non-traditional customers. They've applied it since 1995 to their Oasis Development Enterprises, which is based in Massachusetts' former Boston Stock Exchange building and owns a portfolio of 30 U.S. properties that includes the Wells Fargo & Co's Las Vegas regional headquarters and is rumoured to be worth close to $1 billion.
For that business, the policy is called the 50, 75 and 25 per-cent rule, said Raymond Lee. "At 50 per-cent occupancy, we plan to break even. At 75 per-cent occupancy, we look to making a 25-per-cent return. So, with the remaining 25 per cent, we have the opportunity to do some good."
That means providing low- or no-cost office space for Habitat for Humanity and other non-profit organizations. It also means an average occupancy of 96 per cent, Lee said.
The firm reports 90 per-cent occupancy for its extensive holdings in once-decaying Lynn, a Massachusetts industrial community, once known as Sin City, that began calling itself City of Firsts a decade ago. ODE's policy, Lee said, is "to catalyse prosperity in regions of despair through strategies of public participation and local empowerment,"
As for getting the less financially empowered aboard his aircraft, Lee said: "I really take pleasure in offering superior service. I find that a spiritual undertaking. If I were in church, people might say, Amen."