comes into its own; multi-leg trips that would ordinarily see a lot of time wasted on advance check-in times, security, immigration queues, airport procedures and even indirect flights are much better managed by private aviation.” Even the dark cloud of downloading
and file-sharing hanging over the music industry has a silver lining for private jet providers. “With retail sales of music declining in the wake of the downloading trend, artists make a much higher proportion of their money from touring these days,” says Gianquitto. “So charter aircraft activity around the live music scene is a real growth area.” Gianquitto’s views are echoed
task, but if you turn up later, you’re not late – because it’s your plane and your schedule.” So if the client rolls up an hour
late, can you slot them into London City’s busy schedule and get them away pronto? Yes, says Grover...well, actually, he says a lot more than that, but to skirt around the techno- talk, the Jet Centre is linked into government-designated and EU- regulated firm Airport Coordination Ltd (ACL), which basically streamlines the airport’s slots to maximum efficiency. This is combined with an “electronic flight strip progressing system”, which cuts down admin and frees up air traffic controllers’ time, meaning a higher runway usage rate. What all this boils down to is that whatever time you roll up, Grover and his team will pull out all the stops to get you in the air ASAP.
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HIGH-END CLIENTS TAG’s Namihas says 10-15 per cent of its corporate business comes via travel management companies. So I talk to John Gianquitto, chairman and CEO of The Appointment Group, whose divisions – including Travel by Appointment and Music by Appointment – manage travel for often high-end clients in sectors including finance, sport and entertainment. Gianquitto says: “Using private aviation is a way of saving huge amounts of time – though it can also be very cost-effective, too. It often makes sense from a financial perspective. For example, a day return trip from London to Nice for six passengers can cost around £8,000, which isn’t that far off six full business class fares. Factor in the time savings and it can become a much more competitive option.”
A travel buyer for a multinational engineering company agrees: "We regularly have to shuttle people between regional European and UK sites," she says. "When, as is often the case, there's no direct flight connection, it makes sense, cost- and time-wise, to use private charter. This can be the case whether it's a small group of senior management
“Using private aviation is a way of saving huge amounts of time – though it can also be very cost-effective too”
in an executive jet, which we book through a broker, or for larger groups of employees, where we charter a commercial plane from an airline." She also cites the hotel costs saved by one-day trips not possible via scheduled flights. Gianquitto says private jet use
is “really going from strength to strength” in the entertainment sector. “When artists are on tour and playing in a number of different cities it really
by Patrick Margetson-Rushmore, chief executive of London Executive Aviation (LEA), which owns and manages aircraft based in London City, Oxford, Farnborough, Luton, Biggin Hill and Stansted, as well as in Paris and Moscow.
He says the financial services and IPOs business “fell off a cliff” in 2008, but the arts and entertainment sector remained steady, with LEA’s 12-14 passenger (plus plenty of stowage capacity) Embraer Legacy aircraft “very popular with bands on tour”. However, Margetson-Rushmore says he’s seeing a return of the City boys and girls. “The recession changed the mix materially, with corporate financial business dropping massively. But over the last year we have seen change – the beginning of finance coming back. We started to see quotes growing from October 2010, and bookings increasing from February last year.” Like Gianquitto and others, he cites instances where like-for-like