Air Charter Service defies European market jitters

This July aircraft charter specialist, Air Charter Service enjoyed a record month for volumes despite unease in European market. ACS booked 1,114 charter contracts last month making it the company’s best month on record.

Group CEO, Justin Bowman, commented: “It is a great achievement to have organised more than 1,100 charters in a month – many of these consisting of multiple sectors. With our diversification into other markets, such as OBCs and aircraft sales, we actually arranged a total of 1,212 contracts in July. That is an average of one contract every 36 minutes.

“Full cargo charter numbers did appear to suffer a little in the UK, however European business was stable and we saw impressive growth in our Asian offices as well as Australia, which has got off to an excellent start, after opening earlier this year. Our OBC division has also enjoyed strong growth throughout the year and contributed to July’s record.

“Growth was mainly fuelled by private jet business though, which was up almost 20% year on year. We saw particularly strong growth in Europe and North America. Despite the deterioration in general of the Russian market, the numbers across our three CIS offices were up on last year. The addition of our three latest offices, in Geneva, Miami and Sydney, has also increased numbers as they are starting to establish themselves as profitable operations.”

Bowman continued: “Last August was our previous record so, fingers crossed, we can maybe better July’s figures this month.”