ACS’s Asia Pacific offices predict strong growth in 2010

Feb. 10, 2010 - PRLog -- In 2009 Air Charter Service’s two offices in the Asia Pacific region – in Hong Kong and Tokyo – said that they had noticed an increase in executive aircraft chartering, specifically in the second half of last year and the beginning of 2010.

Gavin Copus, General Manager of ACS Asia Pacific, said: “Since last summer, numbers of private jet charters booked with us in the region have more than doubled compared to the same period 12 months ago. A lot of new clients have come to us after realising that chartering their own jet is a lot more affordable than they at first thought. Also I think clients in the region have learned from the mistakes made in the U.S. and Europe when it comes to signing up to JetCard and fractional ownership schemes, and are less likely to enter these long term contracts. ”

He added: “To cope with this extra demand, we have significantly strengthened our team in the office in recent months as we believe the market is in an upswing and we will need the extra manpower. Everything we have been reading in the press about the global private jet industry has been doom and gloom as many of those companies which sell fractional or jet card schemes are experiencing losses. However, it must be said that a large number of these companies rely solely on selling these schemes rather than also offering ad-hoc charters. In my opinion their losses seem to be reflecting people’s changing spending habits, rather than the failure of the industry to recover.”

Copus believes that all the signs indicate there will be no slowdown in demand this year: “The market seems to still be as buoyant as at the start of the year, and shows no signs of dropping off, so I can only see further growth in 2010. It’s fair to say I’m optimistic that we have turned the corner of the global economic slowdown, and there is a bright future ahead for aircraft chartering.”

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Air Charter Service is an air charter broker with a global network of 10 offices in North America, Europe, Africa, CIS, the Middle East and Asia.