Hong Kong’s Metrojet (Booth H417), the aviation arm of Sir Michael Kadoorie’s Peninsula Hotels Group, is the biggest business aviation operator at Hong Kong International Airport. “Next year we’ll be celebrating our 20th anniversary of getting an AOC [aircraft operator’s certificate], on June 17th, 1997,” Kitty Lau, Metrojet senior marketing and product development executive, told AIN during a meeting at the company’s offices in Tung Chung, near HKIA. “So we were the pioneers.”

Lau said that due to its hotel group ownership, “[Metrojet’s] brand image as an operator leans toward hospitality, but we also provide maintenance and charter. Not many in Hong Kong provide all three.” She added that the company also has a maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) joint venture in the Philippines, Metrojet Engineering Clark (MEC), and one in Zhuhai, Metrojet Hanxing Zhuhai, and in Mumbai now, too, called Tajair Metrojet Aviation. The company also has a representative office in Beijing, and it wants to expand its aircraft charter and management activities across southeast Asia.

“We now have 30 aircraft under management, one of which is partly owned by Metrojet–a Gulfstream GV. In Hong Kong we have slightly more than 20 aircraft, and a few are based in other places in China and Southeast Asia,” Lau added , “For a long time it was a family business with two aircraft”­–operated by Sir Michael in the 1990s.

Metrojet rents Hangars 1 and 2 at the Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre (HKBAC), while Hangar 3 is used by other service providers such at Jet Aviation. “It’s very busy at the airport, and we have a lot of difficulty getting parking slots, even though we have the hangars,” Lau explained. “Some business jet operators have been told not to come in on certain days as the airport prefers to give the slots to commercial airlines.” The Kadoorie group does have a stake in HKBAC, however, but prefers to stay in the background, and it doesn’t give Metrojet any particular power at the facility.

“Some Chinese and Southeast Asia clients want to base aircraft in Hong Kong rather than their home towns, probably because of the service quality and time it takes to get permits there. But parking [in Hong Kong] is saturated…the ramp is not big,” Lau told AIN. Aircraft are usually allowed to stop for only six hours at the airport before they have to go somewhere else.

Metrojet has a sister company on the helicopter side, Heliservices, which has its headquarters at Shek Kong Airport, in the New Territories. The company has 300 employees and is led by Björn Näf, a former Swissair who has been with the company for around six years. There are around 260 and Close to 70 of the 300 Metrojet staff members in Hong Kong are pilots, with around 35-40 flight attendants and “almost 100” maintenance technicians.