October 10, 2003
Austrians set the pace with Gulfstream additions

Austria’s Jetalliance has begun operating a GIV which joined its fleet after the company formed a partnership with the Middle East financial investor Alghanim Group.

Ceo Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer told EBAN: “We formed this alliance at the beginning of the year and we’ve benefited from both the connections the company has, and also from its fleet. Once we’d decided to keep the GIV, it was just a matter of retrofitting the aircraft and registering it in Austria under JAR OPS 1.”

In its first few months, the GIV has already carried out a five-week trip for a celebrity client, fulfilling a succession of short to medium range trips, and also a number of one-off charters overseas.

Despite a growing market for this type of aircraft on home soil, Lichtner-Hoyer says the company doesn’t expect its primary source of business to come from Austria.

He said: “We expect to hear a lot from brokers on the international market, especially since it is an aircraft that is 100 per cent available for charter. It is not restricted like some other corporate aircraft that are commercially used in order to generate some revenue for the owner.

“The aircraft will suit up to ten passengers and with a range of 4,000nm, is ideal for flights to the east coast of the US and to the Middle East. We also get a lot of requests from the Russian market.”

As regards competition for the GIV, Lichtner-Hoyer says there aren’t a huge amount of operators of this type of aircraft in Europe because Gulfstream has not, in the past, concentrated its efforts over here. He explained: “It’s a well-known fact that Gulfstream has been quite slow on the European market.

“For whatever reason, this region has not been a priority for them – perhaps because they’ve been so successful in the Middle East and the US. That said, they’re becoming much more aggressive now, particularly with the market downswings.”

Soon to join Jetalliance’s GIV in its charter fleet is a managed GV. The company expects the owner to use it 50 per cent of the time, with the rest being turned over for charter. Lichtner-Hoyer said: “Until the aircraft gets here, it’s difficult to evaluate how big the demand is going to be – but from what we’ve seen of the Swiss-based GVs, I think there will be quite a lot of demand for it.”

Where the GIV will major on trips to the east coast of the US, the GV is expected to be a regular visitor to the west side. Said Lichtner-Hoyer: “You can cover the distance nonstop from Moscow and it’s much faster with a long-range jet because you can go flat out at .85 Mach, rather than having to maintain .8.”

Also a permanent fixture in Jetalliance’s fleet is an MD-83. Like the GIV, it has been carrying out charter trips since May and is gradually making a name for itself. Lichtner-Hoyer said: “Obviously it’s in a totally different long-range market. It suits groups of between 20 and 44 people and demand seems to be coming from the Middle East, Africa and Russia.

“We haven’t yet had the time to convince European governments that it could be an option for them but I think it’s only a matter of time. It makes no sense for some of them to use aircraft in scheduled service because it’s very costly and very inconvenient, with the high density of seating that a typical airliner offers.”

Jetalliance says it originally chose its name because of the company’s intention to form partnerships and to this end, is now planning a tie-in with Germany’s Windrose Air Flugcharter whereby both companies will accommodate excess demand for the other.

Said Lichtner-Hoyer: “We won’t be structurally bound to them but we have very good connections with their management. We have always believed that having partners will always generate more business than competing with each other.”

Not content with this latest set of additions, Jetalliance is now on the verge of taking a managed G200 on its books and in the first quarter of next year will have itself a G550 – or as it used to be, the GV-SP.