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PROVINCETOWN GUIDE
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| DIRECTORY |
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Provincetown :: Tuesday, February 9th 2010
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Come Fly with Me
The Cape Air Experience
By Daniel McDermott of Provincetown Magazine
July 2nd, 2009
“The chef should always eat his own food,” says Dan Wolf, President and CEO of Cape Air, an active pilot with more than 30 years of flight experience, and a 2008 recipient of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
| “The passion and love I have is for the people, the communities we serve, and the people I’m blessed to work with here at Cape Air,” says the soft-spoken CEO. |
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And just as the dimly lit, oaken serenity of a fine dining room contrasts with the neon chaos of its adjoining kitchen, Cape Air’s administrative offices can be found in two very differing buildings: one, an elegant Retrix with stainless steel pillars, art-deco halls, a sexy glass façade, and a Chanel-scented receptionist; the other a gymnasium-sized hanger where work-torn airplanes lay dormant, awaiting spa treatment, where socket wrenches sputter in calloused hands to the boom-box drone of classic rock radio, perforated metal steps spiral up to a lateral-handled door behind which telephones ring, keyboards clatter, customer requests are fulfilled, customer problems are handled with smiling tolerance, and coffee-stained maps lay strewn across cafeteria-style tables. It is in this latter building that Dan Wolf keeps his office.
If you fly to Provincetown, Hyannis, Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard, you travel via Cape Air; it’s our airline – a fortunate stipulation.
But after 20 years of service that began with a single route – Boston to Provincetown – and little more than a half-dozen employees, Cape Air has stretched its service into the formerly inaccessible tundra of Upstate New York, with locations such as Albany, Saranac Lake, and Ogdensburg, through the central coast with service from Baltimore to Hagerstown, MD, and Lancaster, PA, down along the Gulf Coast from Fort Myers to the Florida Keys, and a host of tropical destinations that reads like George Hamilton’s vacation planner: St. Croix, St. Thomas, Ponce, Rota, Tortola, and even Guam.
It all adds up to over half a million passengers, 100,000 flights per year, and code share agreements with Continental Airlines and JetBlue Airways, allowing seamless connecting flights and hassle-free booking beyond the web of Cape Air service.
Along with his summertime in-flight and maintenance duties, his obligations as a husband and father of three daughters, as well as his role as executive aeronautical chef, Wolf sustains a fierce level of philanthropy.
“The passion and love I have is for the people, the communities we serve, and the people I’m blessed to work with here at Cape Air,” says the soft-spoken CEO, with an unassuming gaze and physical calm known only to the sincere.
“It’s a combination of the flying side and the aviation side, but it’s also a combination of the people side that I think makes Cape Air a unique company.”
Dan sits as a member on numerous boards, including the Regional Airline Association, the Department of Conservation and Recreation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Advisory for the Federal Reserve Bank, the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, the Cape Cod Economic Development Council, the Cape Cod Business Round Table, the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod, the Housing Assistance Corporation, and the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.
He also received the Good Guy Award from the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus for his support of women in the workplace.
“About half of our senior team are female. We’ve got a very open and good workplace relative to gender. I think we’re a model company in that way . . . we have a regular meeting every Tuesday morning at 10:00; half the people in the room are women and half the people in the room are men; it’s a good thing.”
The environment at Cape Air headquarters is one of health, happiness, and intellectual focus. If you have a job that you enjoy showing up to every day, then you understand how directly a competent work environment relates to company success.
Dan Wolf and his team provide impeccable service, and in doing so have transformed from a burgeoning, entrepreneurial company to a mature example of business done right. As Wolf assures, “We are a growing company; we want to continue to be a growing company; and all of that growth goes back to the communities we already serve.”
Wolf and his employees at Cape Air are the type of people we all want in control of our flying experience. As their Web site states: “Make our customers happy and have a good time doing it.”
Cape Air tickets are available at a number of online outlets including Travelocity and Expedia and can be purchased at www.capeair.com or by calling a reservation agent at 800.352.0714.
Also visit ProvincetownMagazine.net for more articles and information.
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