Air Alpha Aircraft Sales - Piper's representative in Denmark since 1996 - has just been appointed by Piaggio as its representative for the P180 aircraft, for the whole of Scandinavia. Managing director Bjarne Jorsal said that he was very pleased with the decision and would officially confirm the news at this year's NBAA convention in New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the company recently sold two of its King Air 200s to former lessee, Aviation Assistance of Roskilde. In addition, Air Alpha Aircraft Sales has a King Air C90A on lease to a company in Greece; a Bell 206 on lease to another Greek company, which is being used for cleaning insulators on power lines; two Bell 222s and a LongRanger that it operates in Greenland; and a 206 that it charters out, also in Greenland.

Said Jorsal: "We don't operate any helicopters in Denmark at the moment because one of our partners, Uni-Fly, operates his EC120, Bell 47 and Hughes 300 in Denmark and we don't want to compete with our affiliates. He takes care of Denmark, while we take care of Greenland and elsewhere.

"In Greenland, our charter work involves government contracts, ad hoc charters for geological surveys, and company and tourist charters. We are in competition with Greenland Air."

Asked who has been snapping up Air Alpha's line of new and used Piper aircraft, Jorsal said: "People from the IT industry, people who have sold their companies and exercised their dream of flying, entrepreneurs. In short, people who are tired of waiting in airport lounges and waiting for the airlines to fly them home."

Air Alpha's near future plans include the expansion of the company's maintenance facilities in Odense, where it currently has 12 mechanics working full-time.

Jorsal concluded: "We foresee strong growth in the aviation industry in all sectors. In particular, with manufacturers who are outsourcing part of their manufacturing to the Baltic countries, to the former Russian states. Their management is here in Scandinavia but their production is in other countries, so they have to move the management around.

"I also see many companies bringing in clients from aboard. They use business aviation as a bus to haul in potential clients and show off their production units to them. Few can resist such an invitation to see the company's product. It's a very highly used sales tool.

"What's more, it's not expensive compared to running advertisements on television and in papers. Even though it's a high cost operation initially, companies are finding that they get a high return on it."

Air Alpha Aircraft Sales is 100 per cent owned by Air Alpha, which also owns in its entirety, Air Alpha Greenland.