Leading aircraft charter
specialist Air Charter Service has revealed that the company’s revenue was $677m
(£477m) in the financial year ending January 31st 2018, a 39% increase on the
previous year.
Across all divisions the company
arranged almost 15,000 contracts in 2017, up from 12,500 the year before. The
total number of passenger charters was up more than 20% to 8,618 over the year.
And cargo flights increased by 11%, to 4,300 contracts arranged across 2017. The
company revamped its onboard courier division two years ago and that also
enjoyed a good year, increasing job numbers by 52% to 1,670.
Andy Christie,
Group Director of Private Jet Charters at ACS said: “8,618 is a huge
amount of passenger charters - the figure means that, on average, we
arranged a passenger flight every hour of every day in 2017. Many of
the contracts that we fly are round trips or multi- sector, meaning
that in terms of actual flights, the number is well over 15,000.
“20% growth is even more
impressive when compared with WingX figures for 2017, which show
that private jet flights increased by just under 3% in Europe and
less than 5% in the US. We are very proud of our numbers, especially
with several start-ups aiming to buy a share in the industry through
millions of pounds of their investment being spent on marketing.”
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Andy Christie |
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Group CEO
Justin Bowman
added: “Our cargo figure of £213m ($300m) was somewhat boosted by
charters related to the hurricanes in the Caribbean and the southern
States of America, along with other one off contracts, but
underlying growth is still impressive.
“Another pleasing aspect
was the fact that the growth was spread across the world with 14 out
of our 20 worldwide offices experiencing at least double digit
growth, with our European, American and Far Eastern offices proving
to be the star performers.” |
Justin Bowman |
ACS’s long term investment in
technology has also started to pay dividends, with customer-facing projects
proving key in much of this growth. Along with this impressive increase in
sales, the development of ACS’s back office technology has helped drive an
incredible 100% increase in the company’s EBITDA from £7m ($9.8m) to £14m
($19.6m), despite only a 39% increase in revenue.
Bowman concluded: “All of this
means that ACS is now the largest charter brokerage in the world and we hope
that the buoyant market for aircraft charters will continue into this year. It
is an exciting time at ACS right now - two weeks ago we opened our 21st office,
in Manhattan, and we have plans for several more in the next 12 months.”
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