Airshare, the Oxford, UK-based fractional ownership scheme that came onto the market in May, 1999, has officially ceased trading. The company's Cessna CitationJet is in the early stages of being sold.

EBAN spoke to Adam Stephens, Airshare partner, about the small fractional ownership company's demise, and asked him what went wrong. "My view is that the smaller players will always struggle to survive against NetJets or Flexjets or the other bigger companies.

"They have the name, have the background and have the bankroll to take the losses which are inevitable if you start an operation like this in a new market like Europe.

"Europe cannot support a small, aggressive player such as Airshare," Stephens stated. "Our problems were our small size, combined with the difficulties of having so many differences within Europe. The way to get into fractionals is to go in big," he concluded.

Airshare offered one-eighth shares in new five-passenger CitationJets for $495,000. It also marketed one-eighth lease shares for $4,500 a month. Both fractional ownership and lease customers were to pay a monthly management fee of $6,950 and an occupied flight hour rate of $1,600. The agreement guaranteed customers 65 hours of flight annually, plus up to 20 per cent extra time at the same hourly rate.