Empire Aviation Group is aiming to double the size of its fleet by 2020, the Dubai-based operator told AIN recently. “We’d like to double the fleet of 25-26 aircraft by the end of the decade,” Paras Dhamecha, executive director, said in an interview earlier this month. “We see growth coming out of India, where we are in the process of obtaining a non-scheduled operator AOC. That’s a few months away. We also have our base in Africa and hopefully [a] new base [in Asia], which we are going to be talking about shortly,” he continued.

“Asset management is the focus. This is what we do best. Fleet evolution has been interesting. In 2010-12, of 15 aircraft in the fleet, 10 were on charter. Today, only five out of a fleet of 25-26 are available for charter. The fleet and customer base has shifted.

“It is difficult to characterize our customers. We deal with probably four-to-five of the top corporations in the UAE, at the principal level, the heads of the companies. Most are private individuals leading wholly-owned companies. In this region, business jets are held mostly by the beneficial owner with a traditional loan structure and in a lot of cases–wholly owned and paid in cash.

“We are the second-largest operator of the Falcon 7X in the region. We have got three of those. With [Dassault’s] new airplanes coming in, like the 8X and the 5X, and of course the larger Gulfstreams, it seems like everyone is graduating from the 7X and moving up,” Dhamecha said. “We have a couple of Falcon 900s, Challenger 604s, Challenger 300s, a handful of Legacies, 600s and 650s.

“Last year, we flew around 5,000 hours on the fleet. Now we fly an average of 40 hours per month, per aircraft. This is mostly [for] owners, but there is also some charter.

“It is no longer about Dubai only. It is part of our story, but we have operational bases in Muscat, Oman, where we have three aircraft, and Lagos, Nigeria, where we have just put our sixth and seventh aircraft under management. We have aircraft going to Bangalore, India. That’s where we had our first customer in India–currently we manage three aircraft at that base,” Dhamecha said.

Empire’s shareholders are Airworks of India, one of India’s largest MRO organizations. Airworks is an aviation infrastructure company owned mainly by U.S. private equity interests involved in general aviation, airlines, aircraft and air livery. Management is supplied by Steve Hartley and Dhamecha.

Dhamecha said market growth had been slow of late. “We have not seen a huge amount of growth here in the UAE over the last couple of years. But we have seen well in excess of 50 percent growth as a company year-on-year since we started.”

African Focus

Africa is increasingly important to Empire. “From what I understand, over 100 aircraft are based in Lagos,” said Dhamecha. “We operate six aircraft out of Lagos. We have the seventh one going in [November]. We are already quite a scaled operator managing airplanes from Lagos. We intend to increase that as well. And we started putting the elements in place for that. It’s one of those markets that we don’t necessarily want to go out and [take on too much] until that foundation is set up. So we are pacing ourselves.

“We are attending [MEBA]. We are not exhibiting. That’s a big decision we [made] several years ago. We are very conservative in the way we operate our business. We have always concentrated our resources on the Dubai Air Show.”

Asked if he thought DWC could handle some 40,000 movements per year in the future, he said: “I have heard any number, from 10,000 to 15,000 movements [by] general aviation [in Dubai as a whole]. Certainly the latest number I heard from the likes of Jet Aviation and ExecuJet was around 10,000 between them. I guess ambition is always good. Where I have always been positive is that Dubai always does make things happen.

“I myself was born and raised in Dubai. I’ve seen the place grow. It’s had its quiet moments, but in the end, overall, they make it happen. Will they get to those movements? Really, it depends on what the city ends up doing in the next eight to10 years.

He concluded, “Could the Expo [2020] get the figure up from 10,000 to 40,000? I am not so sure. Certainly, everything that happens between now and then is going to be interesting.”