It’s been a year since the Luxaviation Group announced its partnership with Business Aviation Asia, and in that time the strategic agreement has benefited both companies. “Our partnership with BAA has proved a great success,” noted Luxaviation CEO Patrick Hansen. “With our combined expertise we are delivering premium services across charter, FBO, maintenance, aircraft management, and aircraft transactions stretching from Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa, the Middle East to the Caribbean and Latin America.”

When BAA joined forces with Luxembourg-based Luxaviation, it brought together a fleet of more than 270 aircraft, 50 helicopters, and 1,700 employees.

"It's a highly complementary service offering that has undoubtedly enhanced our client's international travelling experience," said Zhu Yimin, president of China Minsheng Investment Group (CMIG), which owns BAA and through it, a large stake in Luxaviation. "We will be extending cooperation with Luxaviation in the next 12 months to ensure that we continue to stay ahead, anticipating our customers' needs and delivering best-in-class services."

“The first part of our deal was fairly operational, where we looked at how can we do procurement of things together,” Hansen explained. “That has been taking some time but has had very positive results, because now we have a much bigger fleet to buy supplies for. That’s good for BAA, that’s good for us.” Hansen, who is making his first visit to ABACE this year, added that the two companies have agreements in place to charter each other’s aircraft, including some that are reserved exclusively for each other’s use. “We even have some of our people in the BAA offices to make this cooperation as close as it can be,” Hansen noted. “What we all hope for is that the Chinese market will pick up, and I think we are now very well positioned to participate.”

Luxaviation, along with its FBO-operator subsidiary ExecuJet, is occupying its own booth at ABACE (H1122) for the first time. ExecuJet announced at the show that its FBOs in Sydney and Melbourne have achieved Stage I registration in IBAC’s voluntary International Standard for Business Aviation Handling (IS-BAH), making them the first locations in Australia to do so. “Being the first in Australia to achieve the IS-BAH Stage I accreditation is a significant achievement and testament to months of hard word by Gary Forster, our regional FBO manager, and his teams in Sydney and Melbourne,” said Ettore Poggi, Luxaviation’s group FBO director.

The announcement comes a year after the launch of the company’s state-of-the-art facility at Sydney Airport. “We have pushed that certification around the world for all of our FBOs, and one after another they are getting it, and we are very proud of our ExecuJet Australia to have achieved that,” said Hansen. “That’s part of our commitment to raising the standards.” Nine of the company’s 25 FBOs, are now in the IS-BAH program, with three locations achieving Stage II registration.