Charter and Fractional

VistaJet’s bullish expansion plans have long turned the heads of more conventional charter sector rivals suspicious of how well-founded its business plan would prove to be in a sector that has struggled to regain profitability since the ravages of the financial crisis.

VistaJet is enrolling 50 Bombardier Global 5000s and 6000s in Jet Support Services Inc.’s (JSSI) Platinum engine and APU hourly-cost maintenance program. Under the more than $205 million agreement JSSI will support VistaJets’ Rolls-Royce BR710A2-20 engines and Honeywell RE220 APUs on its Bombardier Globals. The Platinum program covers scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, rental engines, supplemental lift, engine removal and replacement and shipping. Besides driving down maintenance costs, the program also provides budget stability, JSSI said.

Unsurprisingly, considering the wave of further bad economic news from the sunnier parts of the Eurozone, chartered business jet departures from southern European cities dropped far more steeply over this part winter than in northern Europe. New charter data prepared by online charter portal Avinode exclusively for AIN shows departures out of southern Europe dipping below 10,000 in January 2013. This was almost 1,000 below the total for the same period last year and a big drop from the almost 20,000 departures seen in July 2012.

London Executive Aviation has been one of the stalwarts of Europe’s private charter sector for almost two decades. Trading conditions have never been tougher than in the last few years, but the UK firm is surviving by sticking to its core values, as founders Patrick Margetson-Rushmore and George Galanopoulos told AIN in an interview prior to this week’s show.