Iris Riesen and Candy Chung fly high on private business jet success
Dynamic duo have excelled in male-dominated private-jet business as the industry has taken off in HK and the mainland over the past few years
Iris Riesen and Candy Chung know what it's like to fly high above the glass ceiling.
Both women are executives of private-jet aviation companies, an industry typically dominated by men. Riesen is managing director at Jet Aviation Hong Kong and Chung heads Global Aviation Asia in Hong Kong. Both have made a name in the industry piloting their companies as the business aviation market has taken off in the city and the mainland over the past few years.
Riesen was fascinated by the aviation industry as a young girl in Payerne, Switzerland, which is home to a military airfield. She was so into aviation that she recalls feeling uneasy unless there was a scent of the kerosene that powers jet engines in the air.
She joined Jet Aviation, a Swiss-based unit of America's General Dynamics, in 1995 after working in the flight dispatch department of Swissair, where she oversaw everything it takes to get an aircraft off the ground.
The only thing that would set her back occasionally was a debrief with an old-fashioned pilot. Back then, she said, the pilots would "give me that look of 'who do you think you are'". Her response? She just kept smiling. But for most of her time with Swissair (renamed Swiss International Air Lines in 2002) and then at Jet Aviation, she has felt recognised for her ability rather than being judged according to her gender. Still, Riesen feels she has had to work harder to prove that she knew her job as well as, if not better than, her colleagues knew theirs.
Relocating to Hong Kong to set up the local office for Jet Aviation in 2001, she found the city an open and easy place for a female executive, in contrast to an encounter she had in the United States. "I was attending a business jet conference in the US where 70 men were standing in a room. The moment I walked through the door, all of them stared at me as if I was in the wrong room."
When she arrived in Hong Kong, the private-jet market was just taking off and there was a lone operator, Metrojet, the aviation arm of Kadoorie Group, which had only one private jet.
