Dubai’s Empire Aviation Group (Chalet S4) has increased its managed fleet to 28 aircraft, with some based as far away as Hong Kong. Its leading official told AIN just before the Dubai Airshow that private-jet charter activity is increasing.

Its subsidiary, Empire Aviation San Marino, was awarded an AOC for aircraft management and charter by San Marino’s Civil Aviation Authority in September, making EAG the first Middle East aviation company to be awarded such an AOC. It said it had already opened an office there “with several aircraft in the AOC pipeline for 2015-2016.”

“Many people wanted to look at a European AOC and base their operations outside Dubai,” Steve Hartley, executive director at EAG, told AIN in an interview. He said diversification of location and the San Marino registry helped improve charter access to aircraft not based in Dubai. “It is moving the tail numbers around to commercialize them,” he said.

Hartley said EAG was currently managing three aircraft based in Hong Kong, 10 in Nigeria, nine in Dubai, two in India, and three in San Marino.

“Nigeria has an agreement with San Marino [so that] you can operate a commercial aircraft there. Nigeria is going relatively well. We use [the local] Triton [Aviation] to assist with ground handling on a lot of charter bookings. There is another Challenger 605 going in there, a Cayman-registered, privately-owned aircraft.

“But it is going to get tougher. The Nigerian Naira is depreciating tremendously versus the dollar. There is not a tremendous amount of growth there at the moment.”

Empire has expanded international operations in the past two years, opening a branch in Bangalore, India, setting up operations in the Far East and launching a dedicated U.S. aircraft sales office in Scottsdale, Arizona. “[Scottsdale] has done very nicely. Our motivation for that was to source planes for our customers, rather than do it in-house. We have set up our own business there,” he said.

“India is a tough market to get into. We have always done things properly and will continue to do so. It is a tough place to do business. It is hard to work around them, and things happen extremely slowly,” he said.

“Dubai International [DXB] is very busy. There are restrictions on slots at certain hours of day. Costs are extremely high in DXB, so [it makes sense to go] out to DWC.”

Hartley started his aviation career at South Africa’s National Airways Corporation in 1978 and was part of a management buy-out in 1997, later selling a majority stake in that company. He started Elite Jets in Dubai and assisted in selling it to a private owner in 2006. He founded EAG with fellow executive director Paras Dhamecha in 2007.

“We have had an inward look at where we are, where we going and what we wanted to achieve. The fleet will continue to grow,” said Hartley.

“Empire Aviation Group has established a good name in the industry in Europe and the Middle East. It is perhaps the biggest single operation in the Middle East today. We would consider acquisitions and are in discussions with a company in London.”