Air Open Sky (AOS), based at Roissy, provided fixed-wing vip transport at this year's French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours: Hélifrance, with whom AOS has an ongoing relationship, operated helicopters for the event. EBAN's Dan Cook spoke to Samuel Bucciacchio, AOS president.

"This year we flew two ATR 42s for this operation, and we did about ten hours flying," he said. "We have four of these aircraft in our fleet. We are anticipating more aircraft next year. Last year was one aeroplane, two this year, maybe next year we will have three or four.

"We transport a lot of sports teams; football teams like St Etienne, Bordeaux, Monaco, Paris St-Germain. We work a lot with rugby clubs too," Bucciacchio added.

AOS also offers corporate charter, and will be flying daily sorties to the trade fair Hannover 2000. The company also operates 'incentives' outings: "We work for a an agency which organises weekends, for example for the best salesman in a company: Things like golf tournaments," Bucciacchio elaborated. "We also have three scheduled lines within France.\r"Our plans are to buy bigger planes in the future: Maybe the ATR 72, maybe bigger than that." AOS's partnership with Hélifrance looks set to last. "We have a friendly relationship, I am a good friend of Frédéric (Aguettant, head of Hélifrance). We did the Monaco Grand Prix together too."