2011 / 12 so far - The thoughts of the MD.

The last 18 months have already been busy for our Performing Arts division and we have been involved in several complicated multi-sector projects.

In January we arranged for a Boeing 737 to fly an Orchestra on a 5 centre tour in Europe, with a concert each night in a different city. The beauty of a single charter aircraft staying "on tour" with the group is that the flights can be arranged to compliment the Orchestras needs, rather than the Orchestra having to fit around the aircraft timetable. The comfort and familiarity of taking the same aircraft with the same crew each day and at the time of their choosing was certainly a major factor in reducing the stress levels touring causes for musicians and management alike.

In March we had two business groups in Japan at the time of the earthquake and tsunami, although mercifully both were over 100 miles away from the disaster area. One of the groups had over 45 cubic metres of equipment which we were flying on a separate B747 freighter and whilst the cargo was waiting on the apron at Tokyo airport, a cloud containing radioactive material passed overhead and contaminated the cargo. As the goods had already been screened prior to loading in Tokyo, this was only picked up on arrival back in the UK, when a random screening procedure for explosives picked up unusually high levels of radioactivity from the pallets. The cargo was quarantined in an empty hangar for a week whilst various Government departments decided what to do next. Fortunately, the half-life of the contaminant was short enough that after 7 days, the radioactivity had reduced so much that the only proceedure required was for the outer protective polythene wrapping and pallet netting to be destroyed.

The second group was a European orchestra that were unable to complete their tour of Japan due to concert hall damage, although they were able to dedicate their Tokyo performances to the victims of the disaster. The Orchestra then departed Japan for China, Taiwan and India. The next destination after Mumbai was Budapest. However, with the concerts separated by only a single travel day and no direct service, the promoters had not left sufficient time between concerts to use scheduled transport. Although the passengers were routed via Frankfurt without too much trouble, the instruments would be a different story. With over 50 cubic metres of instruments to consider, it was impossible to clear Indian customs control, palletise, load, transport via a European hub, transfer to another aircraft, load again, unload and clear Hungarian Customs all within such a short amount of time, especially with no guarantee that the instruments would be loaded on any particular flight. The only way to get the instruments to Budapest for the performance was the charter of a freighter, in this case a Russian registered Antonov 12. This involved 16 hours of flying with a refuelling stop in Baku and is, I believe, the longest cargo flight that we have completed using a propeller driven aircraft.

Long distance solutions have been a speciality this year as we also flew cargo from Germany to Abu Dhabi at short notice using an ATR 72. For an ATR 72 commuter aircraft , this was a huge flight involving two sectors each of 5 hours with a fuel stop in-between and required the operator to get an extension to their area of operation to cover the Middle East. Prior to this flight the airline had not ventured further East than Cyprus.

One of my many leisure pursuits is fishing. I was involved in a club competition on the last Saturday in May when I received a call from a long standing client who pays a retainer for our services and we give advice and source aircraft (without further charge) on more complicated projects. Our client explained that they had been asked about a project that was due to fly in South America less than 3 weeks later and would we cast a professional eye over the arrangements before they got involved. The offer on the table was from a travel agency in conjunction with a North American Air Broker and proposed a single aircraft to carry both passengers and instruments for the whole tour. As soon as we had the basic details, we knew immediately that the solution offered was a recipe for disaster as the aircraft would not be able to carry all of the instruments, which would mean that the Orchestra would not be able to perform.

So now we had a project that had been worked on by others for over 6 months and we were being asked to assist when the first flight was in 17 days time. I was asked for an opinion as to the likelihood of achieving success at such short notice and I voiced my concerns regarding aircraft supply and the problems of arranging diplomatic permits at short notice to operate 5th freedom flights in South America, despite the project ultimately being for a Government funded organisation. But we were confident we could assist and so our task was to research the market for a larger aircraft (Airbus A330 or larger) to replace the unsuitable Boeing B767-200 that had been offered. Our research produced the ideal solution, which was B777-200 which had recently come off long term lease and was between jobs. We encountered diplomatic problems on every sector within South America except between Santiago and Montevideo and regularly requested Government intervention to unlock sensitive situations. To what I think was unanimous surprise the whole tour completed with only minor delays, caused by the ad hoc nature of the project and the lack of set up time. Even Mother Nature assisted by keeping the Chilean ash cloud at bay, or at least elsewhere, whilst our aircraft flew. Countries visitied included Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Uruguay and Venezuela. We have only occasionally arranged charters in South America, but this is our 2nd visit to Bogota and Caracas in the past 9 months, with the other occasion being a cargo flight. I cannot think of a better example of how a five minute phone call to someone who understands the complexities of transporting large groups and equipment has made the difference between a successful tour and a public fiasco.

Having personally been chartering aircraft (as an agent) for over 35 years, it is still refreshing to have more unusual charter flights that maintain my interest.

We have had a very good 2011 after a tough 2009 and 2010, although we have still been profitable in every one of our 26 years of trading as Aircraft Chartering Services.

And going forward, we still have many more interesting projects to come into 2012 and beyond.

Mark Hugo

Managing Director