Reflecting on 2016: The Mirror Family Reunion (without the t-shirts).
On December 2, 2016, a group of 120 Euro Jet employees, both past, present, and future, gathered in the ballroom of the Diplomat Hotel in Prague. Earlier in the day they had piled into the Euro Jet hangar at Prague Airport to film our holiday greeting.
All of this was the culmination of 8 and a half years of a company that has strived from the beginning to survive, to provide for its employees, and of course to give the highest level of service to its customers.
Today we can substitute the word survive for thrive.
It was also a time to bring back so many agents from around the world for what we called a Homecoming celebration, where our team came back to Prague, the home of Euro Jet. It was also like a family reunion where so many of us that work all over the world could reunite for one night as the Euro Jet family.
It was a time to reflect.
Think about when you have looked at a reflection and thought about how you can see something from different angles. Has it made you realize how you see it with your own eyes one way, but then a completely different way when looking at the reflection?
Our end of the year party appropriately included a performance from a gem of company out of Slovakia called “Mirror Family.” The Euro Jet staff were treated to a group of modern dancers dressed in outfits that looked like cut up mirrors all pieced together to represent a member of their family.
We were celebrating a year filled with many successes, all coming from a diverse group of angles of the work that we do.
Here are some of the highlights from 2016:
- We co-hosted one of the biggest parties in Tampa during the NBAA Schedulers and Dispatchers Event.
- Our OCC Manager Lukas Kadlcik gave a superb presentation on the Balkans at the NBAA IOC Conference in San Diego.
- We opened up a very successful partnership with Split Airport in Croatia and brought in Marija Rada to run our Station.
- Also in Croatia, we opened up a new crew lounge in Dubrovnik’s VIP terminal. Thank you to our station manager Zoran Hotko for all his great work.
- Moving north to the Czech Republic, in the spa resort town of Karlovy Vary we opened up one of our largest crew lounges. A big thank you also to our Station Manager Stepanka Dleskova.
- We ramped up our Georgia operation adding staff and a ramp car in Tbilisi.
- We unveiled a brand new booth at EBACE in Geneva that proudly displayed our “real” people on “reel” looking pillars. Here we could show off our agents located all over the world. We also shook things up a little and invited customers and vendors to join us for a cooking display of molecular gastronomy or cooking with liquid nitrogen.
- We broke our record for the most number of flights handled in a given year. Every year since the company started in 2008 has been a record year and this streak continued into 2016.
Okay…now lets change course…bank to the left…and ascend to flight level three eight zero.
Lets get away from reflecting on just the company and look at ourselves as people.
Unlike any company I have worked for, Euro Jet cares more about its people, and thinks of its employees as family.
On a personal note, I enjoy nothing more than talking with employees and learning more about them. Put a couple (or more…) drinks in me and I can talk nonstop to anybody. I don't recall the conversation, but my talkativeness usually corresponds to the headache the next morning.
In all seriousness, what I can personally reflect upon is what was for me a very challenging year health wise. I learned all too well that how we see things and perceive people from what is reflected can be a complete illusion to what they may be actually seeing or experiencing inside.
Those dancers at our holiday party event could dance so well in so many directions that the light reflecting off of them seemed to go everywhere. It was a total visual overload.
Sometimes life can feel that way, which requires us to put our priorities back in perspective.
Life can be unpredictable and we have to be ready to take some hard knocks and get back up. Many of my colleagues see things this same way and perhaps this is a huge part of our success as a company.
And these colleagues are such interesting people, with many stories to tell.
These stories are not necessarily Euro Jet stories. They are not just about working in the office, in operations, at trade shows, and of course on the ramp coordinating a ground operation.
No, they are stories about their family, their friends, and personal issues that they too had to overcome to be there. They are about them as people. The mirror dancers so poetically represented the many angles of these people, and all the complexity to them.
It is this complexity that makes us a leader in our industry with our global network of experienced, very talented, and hard working individuals. All of whom I consider family.
So let me leave you with this thought: There is nothing more important than our health, our family, our friends, and staying positive…because ultimately we have to believe that whatever we could not fix or solve in 2016…well there is always 2017 for that.
Now reflect on that Sister Sledge!
Happy New Year and Love to All Friends, Family, and the Euro Jet Family of Colleagues, Customers and Vendors. Šťastný Nový Rok a lásku k celému přáteli, rodinou a Euro Jet rodina kolegy, zákazníky a dodavateli.
