London Oxford-headquartered Hangar 8 plc intends to raise up to £2 million by way of a placing on AIM, the London Stock Exchange's international market for smaller growing companies. It aims to use the money to expand its 19-strong managed fleet.

The company confirms: "The directors intend that the net proceeds of the placing will be used for working capital to fund identified growth, market the business to new aircraft owners and potential charter customers, and to invest in staff and equipment to internalise specialist maintenance of the aircraft managed by the group."

Dustin Dryden, ceo, says: "We have developed a simple, scalable business model with minimal risk - we are a service business with no large capital assets, base costs are typically covered by contracted management fees and revenues are tied to hours flown rather than number of passengers."

He adds: "The very fragmented charter market is growing, with business aircraft traffic forecast to grow by five per cent per annum from 2011. Hangar8 is perfectly positioned to take full advantage of its growing market and to act as a consolidator of smaller operations. We are looking forward to meeting the challenges of our next phase of growth."

The group derives income from both aircraft owners and third party charter clients and its fleet includes the Falcon 2000EX, Challenger 601, Hawker 4000, the Hawker HS125s, Citation XLS, CitationJet and Super King Air. Aircraft managed by the group are configured to carry between five and ten passengers.

Hangar8 points out: "As the group does not own any aircraft itself, it does not carry the risk of high capital investment or depreciation. Hangar8's strategy is to concentrate on certain aircraft types to obtain economies of scale, and to increase the size of the fleet it manages both organically and through the potential acquisition of other private jet charter operators with the intention of being able to provide an aircraft to a charter client at any airport in any EMEA location within three hours of an order being confirmed."

Dryden adds: "By increasing the size of the fleet managed by the group and locating the aircraft at strategic airports, the directors intend to reduce the time needed to provide an aircraft to charter customers and owners around the world and leverage efficiency benefits through spreading certain costs, such as crew, over a larger number of operating bases."

The group's AOC permits it to provide charter flights worldwide with certain exceptions such as northern Canada, northern Russia and Australia. "At any one time, the group's fleet of aircraft is typically spread across airports in the UK, Europe, the former Soviet Union countries and the Middle East," Dryden says.

"In addition, the group has a US visa waiver agreement with the US Department of Justice which enables the group's customers to fly to the US at short notice without having to obtain a visa."