Twinjet's A319CJ, the first brand new Airbus to go direct to a charter operator in corporate configuration, has clocked up 600 hours in its first year of service. It has been flying mainly for the head of state and entertainment sectors, and only now are the anticipated corporate customers booking the aircraft.

According to Twinjet's Steve Wells, the original plan when the aircraft arrived was to have extended range fuel tanks fitted. "That is not going to happen now, we took the decision during the year that the downtime was too great. Consequently, we can carry upwards of two hundred pieces of baggage.

"I would say 30 per cent of our flights have actually come through the ability to carry that amount of baggage. The BBJs can't, because most have additional fuel tanks," said Wells.

"The aircraft's range is 8.5 hours without the extra tanks. Heads of state and government delegations will travel with hundreds of bags for themselves and family, security people, and so on. We recently brought a head of state from the US to Europe with all their baggage and a three piece suite of furniture in the hold."

EBAN questioned the reasons for the slow entry into the corporate market: "It is not so much an executive shuttle, as the aircraft is so big, but it is perfect for road shows and the like. What you don't get is the whole board of a company travelling together. There was an incident in the States when a company aircraft went down and the whole board was on it. Where does a major corporation start from there?" Wells said.

"We recently did a trip from the States to Pakistan and back again for a large US corporation with 25 senior management and engineers. We have done work for an oil company. We transported them to Africa, for the inspection of a rig, with twelve hours only on the ground before returning to Europe, and that was with quite a crowd.

"We went to the NBAA this year for the second time. 25 per cent of our work is US originating, mostly entertainment-based."

Twinjet has also carried African, Middle Eastern and CIS heads of state, and some members of European governments. A recent flight to Medina, the holy city of Saudi Arabia, saw the head of state theme take on a macabre twist when the body of a deceased dignitary was rushed in from Europe by the A319 to be buried. "We flew in at about four hour's notice, to take the body and coffin from Europe to Medina for a state funeral. It's not somewhere you would get permission to go normally."

He continued: "The majority of the company's work comes through charter brokers. We don't try to make our presence felt on the aeroplane, we try to honour their role in it all. I am doing a trip now that came from a guy in the States, who got our number from the interior designer of his aeroplane, who also did ours. Advertising is difficult, it is hard to reach the right audience."

Wells was keen to report a couple of firsts for Twinjet: "We were the first people in the UK to go JAR-OPS 1 from scratch, whereas others converted over from the old ANO system."

Secondly, Twinjet wanted to use the JepView electronic chart system which had not been approved at the time by the UK CAA. Wells said that it instigated a trial and evaluation which led to the approval of the system for use on other British commercial aircraft. First officer Mark Smith prepared the evaluation and risk assessment paper, now being used by Jepessen as part of their submission to gain similar FAA approval, Wells stated.

The A319CJ is approved for CAT IIIB landings - 75 feet decision height and effectively zero visibility conditions. "We haven't had to use it yet, we tend to go to nice warm places!" Wells said.

Meanwhile, Twinjet has applied to increase its 60 minutes ETOPS approval to 120 minutes and although progress is slow, it hopes to have approval by the end of the year. "At the moment our current ETOPS requirement adds about 25 minutes to our transatlantic runs. But because of the way NAT tracks work, nine times out of ten you have to fly on a similar route to that which we take anyway," Wells said.

"It has been a really interesting year - with the mixture of people, every flight is different. We are just starting to get enquiries from people we had booked last year, which means we are up to scratch.

"The aircraft has been absolutely fantastic, I have to say. We had a one year, 500 hours maintenance input last week: The aircraft was in for four days. In the whole year we have not had one delay for technical reasons whatsoever. Our pilots love it, they really enjoy flying it.

Wells continued: "It is a modern aeroplane, all the systems are brand new, our engineering manager was there when it was in the final stages of production, so it is his baby, we have someone who knows all about it."