Dublin’s Starair has just undergone a fleet renewal programme, replacing its HS 125 700 and Bell 47 with a new Challenger 604 and a Bell 430. Managing director Joe McCarthy told EBAN: “Both aircraft arrived near the end of August and customer response has been fantastic. We must have already flown between 30 and 40 hours and today is the first day it’s been on the ground. The 47 is for sale at the moment and we traded in the 125 700 for the 604 through Bombardier.”

The company decided to upgrade after noticing a trend among Irish and English customers moving towards this type of aircraft. “We’ll definitely be attracting new customers with this and some of our 125 customers will also move onto the 604. We really want to encourage customers to buy blocks of between 50 and 100 hours. The company prefers to have quality customers rather than one-off individuals (unless there are a number of hours being flown on a one-off charter), mainly because with such a new interior it’s better to know that clients will treat it with a bit of respect,” said McCarthy.

The aircraft’s interior has an 11/12 seat configuration, DVD, CD and VHS Airshow, four channel Satcom, electrical outlets for computers and an oven. “We also put in the unusual feature of an external camera on the tip of the tail fin, which looks down on the crown of the aircraft so you can see it on takeoff and landing. It’s quite spectacular and customers have been amazed,” said McCarthy.

He explained why the 604 had been chosen above other long-range aircraft: “We’ve found that many aircraft in this category are for one type of job but the 604 can do anything from short hops around Europe to longer trips over to the US. It’s an all round aircraft at a reasonable price and we’ve

already flown to Greece, Italy and North America.”

Starair already knew demand would be in place after a couple of key clients expressed an interest for this type of aircraft. “With certain regular customers already on board we could see the potential was quite large for the 604. The Irish market is quite small, but we feel we can add a couple more clients from Ireland and a couple from the UK,” said McCarthy.

The company is also involved in brokerage and often gets in Citation Excels and Bravos for customers. “I don’t think many operators also broker, but we like to see our service as an overall package. So for those customers looking for smaller aircraft, we can still do deals to support them,” he said.