Leading aircraft charter
specialist, Air Charter Service, says that aircraft charters will be an
essential part of logistics for the FIFA World Cup in Russia next year.
Group Director of ACS’s
Commercial Jets division, Matthew
Purton, commented: “The 2018
championship in Russia throws up a variety of problems with regards
to getting people around.
"Russia is a huge country and the distance between
some of the stadiums is more than 1,700 miles, which is a long coach ride!
With only Russian registered airlines being able to perform domestic flights
in the country, this drastically limits the choice of aircraft able to
transport the teams and fans from hotels and training camps to matches. At
some of the slightly smaller airports involved next year, Russian speakers
will be needed as the locals will not speak enough English to help with the
specific requirements needed for such detailed flight programmes.
“Fortunately we had an
excellent ‘practice run’ with the Confederations Cup in June and July of
this year, for which ACS flew five of the eight teams involved and made a
lot of good contacts. I believe that we are in a great position to offer
clients the best solutions for next year - we have two offices in Russia,
one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. |
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Matthew
Purton |
"A
quarter of the 40 matches in the tournament will be played in
those two cities. The fact that we have a Russian bank account
will mean easier transactions than those companies using
Dollars, Euros or Sterling and we will be looking to position
some of our experts on site at the airports to make sure
everything runs smoothly.
"It is
typically this period the year before a World Cup that we start to
get serious interest in aircraft charters for the following June.
With only two qualifying games left, football associations,
supporter groups, sponsors, media and the teams themselves now have
a good idea of whether they will be taking part in the tournament
and will be starting to look into various options ahead of the draw
in December.
“Following the initial interest that we had a couple of weeks ago,
bookings will really start to take off when the Group Stage draw is
held on Friday December 1st. We expect to be working all over that
weekend with requests and booking aircraft.”
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