The problem, he says, is “boutique” is bandied around too often, but in his case he really means it.

“Everyone says boutique, but you cannot be boutique when you have 25 or 30 planes, because the management are lost in board meetings and travelling all the time,” he says.

Instead, Belgian Laitat, who was previously the CEO and accountable manager of Abelag/Luxaviation Belgium, intends to cap his fleet at 15.

“My goal is not fleet size,” he says. “Of course, we will be profitable. It’s not a goal to lose money. But my biggest pride is that at Abelag very few owners left. Some of them, I was operating their fourth successive plane. So if you have that as a passion, you can make a living quite decently.”

Fulfil promises

JetHouse, which is registered in Malta, launched with a Dassault Falcon 7X in Brussels in early 2024 and Laitat plans to add another aircraft “every six to nine months”.

“I have good confidence that they will come,” says Laitat, who oversaw a fleet of 25 aircraft at Abelag. The 15 is “not a magic number”, he adds, but about the level where he and his senior team of eight, with about 175 years’ collective experience in the business, can provide a “boutique” service. Alongside Laitat as founders are Nicolas Willemot, the CFO, and Tina Boeckx, director of flight operations, both also formerly of Abelag.

“It becomes difficult to fulfil promises because it’s always the founder or the CFO, who at some point met an owner and said, ‘OK, we’re going to pamper you’. But when it’s too big, the person feels you don’t follow them in the same way. So it’s really a matter of time that is driving this number in the fleet.

“We don’t like to disappoint. Of course, sometimes, even the bad weather is your fault but having a client who sends you a handwritten note saying, ‘I’m so happy to have joined you’. It’s what we have in our blood.”

Passion for service

JetHouse’s natural market is Europe, the Middle East and “why not some French-speaking countries in Africa” but Laitat is not planning to expand for the sake of it.

“If someone was really begging to operate now out of Bermuda, I’m not sure I’m the right person,” he says.

Laitat was at Abelag for nearly 20 years, including for the acquisition by Luxaviation in 2013 and the purchase of ExecuJet in 2015, but left in 2021 with Willemot following closely behind.

“Let’s say that it became so big,” he says. “It’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact, it suits you or not.”

He quickly took up running AllianceJet in Malta, but the tide was pushing him towards setting up on his own and in May last year he took the plunge. Knowing he needed his team in place before he could meet with Transport Malta to apply for the AOC, he began ringing around trusted former colleagues and a number left jobs to join him. Laitat also partnered with Fiona Healy, MD, FCF Assets who “delivered impeccable guidance on all the steps needed to expedite the AOC”. The licence was signed off in seven months in February 2024.

“I wanted to have something with an amazing team, and be able to do something without any obstacles, with this passion for service,” he says. 

“The beauty of starting from scratch is we had the possibility to use these new technologies that have flourished in recent years that are all integrated. It is efficient and helps everyone.”

Freedom

A lack of transparency is one of Laitat’s bugbears in the industry and he is determined to operate differently at JetHouse.

“The way to keep the loyalty of clients is to always be able to look at yourself in the mirror,” he says. “It’s a small world and in the end, the cost of changing an owner or having plus three aircraft one year, but minus four the next, it’s not efficient.

“Of course, there are very few clients and it’s a tough business. Sometimes just to reach for a coffee with an owner, it’s the work of nine or 12 months.”

Building trust with a client leads to a “fantastic adventure for a long time”, he adds.

Laitat admits that being an entrepreneur doesn’t always come naturally but he is relishing a new adventure with JetHouse. 

“Some people are born entrepreneurs, some have to be entrepreneurs by the events of life, you know? But it’s quite fantastic to have this freedom,” he says.

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The additional aircraft makes ACAM the largest Embraer Legacy operator in Asia Pacific, the company claims.

It recently also took on the  the full turn-key management and operations of an additional Gulfstream G550.

READ: Broderick’s ACAM on a ‘rocket ride to the West’ 

The company has a global fleet of more than 40 aircraft across its southeast Asia, Middle East, India and Pacific operations.

ACAM, which was founded by CEO Darren Broderick in 2010, is the largest privately owned corporate aviation management company in southeast Asia and the Pacific. 

It recently bought German flight inspection operator Svege as part of its plan to expand into Europe.

The post ACAM Pacific adds Embraer Legacy 600 to fleet appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

One of the aircraft is based at London Luton Airport at Signature Flight Support’s FBO, while the other’s base is at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

“The Praetor offers a generous, exceptional cabin for nine passengers. It is ideal for shorter runway airports, including Cannes Mandelieu, enabling great flexibility for our clients” said Derek Thomson, chief operating officer, Air Charter Scotland. “Private air charter has been embraced by many new customers these past 24 months.” He added that the level of charter interest the company is experiencing “remains strong”.

The new jets have a range of 4,000nm (7,408kn) and can operate direct flights from London to New York in 7.5 hours and London to Dubai in 6.5 hours. They feature HEPA filters and air quality management throughout the cabin, as well as high-speed connectivity from Satcom Direct.

The Glasgow-headquartered company now manages 11 business jets. Aside from the two new additions, the fleet includes an Embraer Legacy 650, Legacy 500, a Citation Latitude, a Falcon 7X, a Citation CJ2 and Citation CJ1, as well as two Citation XL’s and a Bombardier Challenger 350 which are on the Maltese Registry.

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The German operator said that the decision was made in response to “high demand” for the acceptance of cryptocurrency.

Siegfried Axtmann, chairman and founder, FAI Aviation Group, said: “FAI is a forward-thinking business and following requests from clients and following our own research, we decided to accept cryptocurrency as an additional payment option.”

Axtmann added that cryptocurrency has progressively gained popularity as a form of payment in business aviation, offering a fast and secure service. Transactions are also not limited to banks’ business hours.

FAI Aviation Group said the decision aims to enable it to expand its customer base, as well as benefit current clients.

“We anticipate our customers will appreciate the choice and that it will help give our business a competitive edge,” said Axtmann.

FAI Aviation Group added that it anticipates record sales for 2022, expecting group revenues of around €120m ($126.8m) and a growth forecast at 8-10% per annum over the next five years.

The European operator has one of Germany´s largest private fleets of Bombardier business jets. The fleet includes five Global Express, one Challenger 850, six Challenger 604s and seven Learjet 60s.

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One broker stopped himself when he started asking a competitor how business was going. “Sorry, it’s a stupid question, I know it has been great for you as well,” he said.

The past 12 months have seen the most demand in the history of the 73-year-old Air Charter Association (formerly the Baltic Air Charter Association). With brokers working flat out in the summer to find both aircraft and slots to land them. At times the market truly was at capacity. 

While the mood was celebratory, Kevin Ducksbury, chair of the Air Charter Association and head of aircraft leasing, operations and compliance, Air Partner, did raise the issue of illegal charter. The Association has dubbed January 21st as ‘Fly Legal Day.’ On January 21st 2019, professional footballer Emiliano Sala and the pilot died when their aircraft – which was illegally offered for charter – crashed into the English channel. The full story is now told in a fantastic BBC Podcast –Transfer: The Emiliano Sala Story.

Strong demand for charter is also reducing the number of aircraft for sale. CJI spoke to a US Citation Jet owner this week who although looking to upgrade to a super-mid-size aircraft is putting off the decision for now. He said: “I do want to sell, but I can’t find an aircraft and quite frankly the CJ is doing so well from charter that I don’t want to sell it at the moment.”

The awards took place a few hours after the UK finance minister said that the country is now in recession. The Eurozone looks similar. “It is going to be tough for many people,” said one senior broker. “But not for all our customers. We may see some people stop flying but so many people have discovered business aviation and they are not going back.”

Charter flights are already falling. “We have seen the charter market soften since the summer, coming off the record peaks set in early 2022, with charter activity this winter dipping below where it was this time last year, but still substantially above charter demand in pre-Covid 2019,” says Richard Koe, MD, WINGX. He says that the US charter market is more resilient than Europe and that the US has also seen flight departments increase flying.

“Looking ahead, we expect the global charter market to retain some gains of its epic rebound after the pandemic, but the twin challenges of climate-optics and economic recession may drag European charter demand back towards 2019 levels during 2023,” says Koe.

Falling to 2019 levels during a recession would be an amazing achievement. Something to celebrate at next year’s awards.

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Everything begins to blend together – the long days, the aircraft and the rows of exhibition booths filled with everything from fabric samples to $50 million business jets.

Fresh new thinking

It’s virtually impossible not to notice the Avinode staff; most of them are young (and Scandinavian), but it is the lime-green Converse sneakers that make them stand out. If you’re lucky, you might even find one of their branded micro scooters to make your commute around the show a whole lot easier.

In 2002, Avinode launched an online marketplace for buying and selling private air charter. It provided real-time pricing, trip-specific aircraft matches and availability information provided by operators. Avinode has seen tremendous growth in the 12 years since it launched, but the company remains committed to bucking business aviation trends.

“Avinode was a disruptor of the traditional way of booking a corporate flight,” says Oliver King, managing director, who as a curly-haired Englishman, is not a typical Avinode employee. “We are a young company. We are a set of people that have grown up with technology; we have not grown up on Airbus or Boeing.”

By the company’s own admittance, Avinode does not have the same marketing budget as the aircraft manufacturers that tend to dominate air shows. But the company worked around this by buying a large display area and sub-letting small ‘pods’ to some of its members.

Whether you think the company’s savvy approach to branding is game-changing or simply gaudy, it is an example of what Oliver King, managing director, describes as the company’s “fresh new thinking.”

Selling data

While the suits and sneakers might look at odds with each other, Avinode’s business plan is far from cobbled together. The sneakers – each of which are emblazoned with ‘Proud Noder’ – are the product of a contract with Converse that has seen the manufacturers make over 200 pairs of shoes for Avinode; it is part of an effort to balance personality with professionalism (“we do still want them wearing suits,” says King).

All of this is part of a very deliberate campaign to make people excited about a product that is otherwise very difficult to conceptualise and, as King concedes, something that can seem a little dull.

“Our product is data,” says King. “At shows like this, the metal is always what people find interesting.”

By bringing together their partners together onto one literal platform, the Avinode exhibit cleverly doubles-up as a visual representation of its online marketplace, while at the same time looking like a futuristic wine bar. Once potential clients have been enticed in by the bright lights, the colourful outfits and the chic networking booths, they can then be shown the workings of Avinode’s system on large monitors.

King points out a young Avinode employee who has taken time out from his job as a programmer in Portland, Oregon (where, like his colleagues, he wears a t-shirt with the ‘Proud Nerder’ slogan) to help man the NBAA exhibit as part of the company’s commitment to getting staff to spend face-to-face time with customers.

“He looks pretty terrified right now,” says King. “But he’s learning about what our customers want.”

The online booking revolution

The system was and still is a B2B platform, but it paved the way for online portals like Victor and Jetsmarter, which use Avinode’s system to support online booking to private jet users.

Other B2C platforms like PrivateFly and Stratajet, however, are independent of Avinode. PrivateFly’s bespoke software integrates directly with the aircraft operator’s scheduling and pricing software; including Air Ops, Leon and BoldIQ.

“When we launched, we wanted to be the Amadeus, not Expedia of business aviation,” says King. “We work behind the scenes, but everybody can have a part of the puzzle.”

Business aviation has been much slower than commercial aviation to adopt online booking and there has been a lot of talk about the ‘online charter debate,’ with traditionalists insisting that a private jet flight is simply too costly – and complex – to book online.

ALSO READ: Why Victor is winning the online jet charter debate

For King, this is a non-issue. “It is happening, there is no debate,” he says. Firmly believing that the cultural shift towards online booking has already happened, King says it will take a combination of technology (namely, a much needed improvement in manual processing) and product alterations (such as pricing and terms and conditions) before business aviation users hang up their telephones for good and move online.

Although he concedes that booking a private jet flight is still very different to booking a hotel room, King believes the business aviation industry is well poised to benefit from what he describes as a third digital revolution, following the original dot-com boom and subsequent online experiments, which were eventually stilted by the economic downturn. “The third time is the charm,” he says hopefully.

Bedroom brokers

Avinode offers two main products: Avinode Trip Manager allows charter brokers to receive online charter quotes and send invoices, while Sched Aero has been designed principally for aircraft operators to manage flights.

The company proudly considers itself as a disruptor of business aviation, but the fiercest critics of Avinode say that its efforts to “level the playing field” have an adverse effect on the industry. While King understands the argument that Avinode makes it possible for amateur “bedroom brokers” to market charter flights, he believes the £500-per-month subscription fee is enough to ensure that Avinode’s members are at least serious about their business (likewise, Avinode will only work with operators holding an air operator’s certificate or Part 135 certificate).

“When we started, we were disrupting companies like Air Partner, but now they’re a good user of Avinode,” says King.

If anything, the problems that may or may not exist with Avinode and ones that are industry-wide. King falls short of saying that he wants to see more regulation for charter brokers, but he says Avinode would support the instatement of something similar to the International Air Transport Association, if only to educate the industry and encourage more transparency.

Worldwide presence

Avinode currently employs around 75 people. The number has actually been reduced after the sale of Wyvern Consulting, an aircraft safety business it acquired when it bought Charter X, in order to streamline its air charter operations. King says the company’s system now includes over 1,000 aircraft in Europe and 3,000 aircraft in the US – and sees an average of 200,000 charter requests per month.

Most of the company’s activities are split between the US and Sweden, but it has four bases in Gothenburg, Miami, Portland and Belo Horizonte in Brazil.

Charter forecast

While it kept relatively quiet at NBAA 2014, Avinode released a forecast for the US and European charter market in 2015, predicting a 3.5 per cent increase for US flights and a “modest growth” of 1.6 per cent in Europe.

“The US is experiencing its strongest run for six of seven years for Part 135 flights, which is much stronger than the fractional market,” says King.

But as the figures show, European aircraft operators are not performing as well as their American counterparts. “Over the last two years, we have forecasted growth for Europe,” says King. “Unfortunately, we have been too optimistic, as we have actually seen negative growth.” This year, Avinode is once again forecasting growth in Europe, but by slimmer margins.

King believes the “Russian risk” is having a definite increase on movements in Europe, with operators not flying to the same degree.

“The core economies have all had good traffic growth,” King says more optimistically. “Spain and Italy have also had positive movements.”

The post Avinode: Don’t you step on my green Converse shoes appeared first on Corporate Jet Investor.

GlobeAir operates the world´s largest fleet of modern Citation Mustang jets.

GlobeAir, a European private jet operator, has formed a partnership with PrivateFly, an online booking platform, which allows GlobeAir’s charter customers to easily book flights online and receive instant information of pricing, airport feasibility and aircraft availability.

PrivateFly has previously relied on aircraft operators to respond to pricing inquiries through its online marketplace – although it can provide accurate estimates – but the new offering from GlobeAir will allow customers to access real time pricing information via optimising scheduling software provider BoldIQ.

MUST-READ: Booking a private jet: Aircraft charter 2.0

Adam Twidell, CEO of PrivateFly, said: “This new functionality is a hugely exciting breakthrough and represents a significant step change in technology, providing in real time a flight inquiry and a confirmed price. GlobeAir were a natural choice for our first aircraft operator partner in this project, as we share a passion for innovation and efficiency in our industry.”

Bernhard Fragner, CEO of GlobeAir, said: “For us this is the very first B2C interface with a well established online platform and it represents a very important step forward and a great move for the future of our business. I believe we are approaching a new era where the booking process will be as stress free and unique as the experience on board.”

Fragner also says that GlobeAir is in the process of developing similar integrations with other online booking platforms.

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Air Charter Scotland collected its Wyvern Wingman certificate at EBACE in Geneva.

The company recently completed a successful Wyvern on-site audit to become a Wyvern Wingman for the first time. 

“Air Charter Scotland is committed to ensuring our clients receive the safest experience possible,” said Derek Thomson, ground operations Director for Air Charter Scotland. “We are proud to achieve Wyvern Wingman status.”

“Our company prides itself on delivering a service which not only meets but exceeds customer expectations and regulatory standards. Recently the company committed to carrying out Flight Crew Training with Flight Safety,” Thomson explained. “Cost was not a factor as we wanted our Flight Crew training to be of the highest quality.”

This year has been an excellent so far for Air Charter Scotland, which recently gained FAA Part 129 approval for their operations within the United States.

The company have also recently added Bombardier series aircraft to their fleet, which, in conjunction with their existing fleet of Embraer Legacy 650, Gulfstream G200 and Cessna Citation, shows that even through tough economic times Air Charter Scotland has managed to grow leaving them very excited for the future.

Photograph: Derek Thompson with the Wyvern Wingman certificate.

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The company’s
large jet market is very buoyant at present with regular clients such as sports
teams, fans and event organizers but Air Charter is looking to widen its
customer base. They hope that the new image appeals to existing customers and
will attract new business from a different market who are looking to charter
mid-size and smaller executive jets.

Air
Charter provides a range of charter services from executive jets and
helicopters, to large corporate groups flying for special events. With the new
look Air Charter intends to expand its business by targeting new markets for
its charter services.

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