BBA Aviation Europe has approved the construction of a new hangar at London Luton airport, which will add very significantly to the parking at BBA’s Signature facility there. The hangar is intended predominantly for based owners to park their aircraft next to the company’s current facility.

Peter Whitehead, BBA Aviation Europe’s chief executive, spoke exclusively to EBAN about the new hangar and also about the company’s near-future plans. Said Whitehead: “Detailed design work will be starting imminently and I would hope in less than 12 months from now, the new hangar will be complete. It will be built large enough to accommodate BBJs and we’re also extending the existing hangar next to it, so that will also have BBJ capabilities.”

It is Whitehead’s opinion that the more hangarage space you have, the more doors you open up. He explained: “There’s a circle in business aviation that you can join at any point. If you’re selling an aircraft, you can then offer the owner a place to keep, maintain and refuel it; a customer who comes in at charter, might then want to buy one; or he can come in as a maintenance customer, and then might want to relocate his aircraft.

“So there’s this whole chain. Having hangarage is very important for attracting base customers, who will probably take a wider basket of services, so you have to keep building up that base.”

At present, BBA Aviation says it has no further plans for hangarage expansion in Europe but says Whitehead, “we certainly will be expanding as and when appropriate, and provided such issues as land availability are in our favour”.

FBO expansion, he says, is not as simple a matter as it is, for example, in the US. He said: “One of the issues in Europe is that some of the airports are less willing to lease an area of their airport on a longer term basis; they are less willing to allow someone to develop a facility in the way Signature has in the States and the way we are doing at Luton.”

And the reason? “The scope and scale and potential of business aviation hasn’t really been evident,” said Whitehead “because traffic has been small by comparison to the US. It is still minor in some areas alongside the airline business. However, places like London Luton and Paris Le Bourget are showing very positive attitudes towards business aviation.”

BBA Aviation’s first venture into Europe was about four years ago when Signature started up a facility at Paris Le Bourget. Since then, it has acquired names such as Osprey, CSE Aviation (Oxford), Air Hanson Engineering and Lynton Aviation, all of whom now come under the Signature umbrella.

So what were the key factors in choosing companies like Osprey and Lynton? Said Whitehead: “We look for business where there’s good potential for traffic growth, where airport access is not a problem area, where we can offer services such as engineering and we also prefer to have an involvement in the sale of fuel because it’s quite difficult to make money at business aviation FBOs unless you are involved in handling the fuel commodity. Making a living just in handling fees, however excellent you are, is pretty difficult.

“Southampton, for example, is a small FBO but in terms of accessibility and having a positive attitude to business aviation, it’s good. We’ve been able to develop business here quite nicely.”

The primary driver for the acquisition of Oxford, says Whitehead, was its training capabilities. “We took the view that training was something of an area for development in our group, particularly with the ever apparent pilot shortages, and with Oxford being the largest independent training provider in Europe, it was an obvious choice.”

With regard to possible near future acquisitions, Whitehead explained: “Having acquired quite a lot of businesses in quite a short time, there is a a lot of organic growth potential in those. So focus number one is doing that, getting the synergies with our cousins in the States, where we have a lot of Signature bases on the Eastern seaboard.

“In terms of increasing the network further, we are looking for selective acquisitions as and when they become available. It’s not something where we want to charge off and stick flags in the ground just for the hell of it but we are keeping an eye, and doing our research.

“This may result in acquisitions or it may result in some joint ownership situations. Unlike the US which is largely homogeneous, in Europe there are a lot of different national features to the national markets within Europe. The cultures are different, the airports, the ownership issues are different. So we have to keep an open mind as to how to participate but we’re certainly looking at participating in further FBOs in Europe.”

Asked about the possibility of expansion into areas such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Whitehead said: “Eastern Europe is not an area we’ve looked into up until now.

“And while there are a significant number of owners in the Middle East, at the end of the day, it’s down to traffic levels. The problem with a low volume airport is that you can’t make the amount of investment to live up to the brand. So we would always choose higher traffic areas first but the Middle East remains a possibility, as does South Africa.”

And so to the next five years in Western Europe. Said Whitehead: “We would like to see our network of facilities, particularly FBOs, substantially increase and we’d like to capitalise on the range of engineering service centre approvals we have.

“On the training side, I would expect that the training capability of Oxford Aviation Training would have expanded very substantially. We do not set out necessarily needing to have the largest number of FBOs in Europe but I guess if our plans are met, then that situation would hopefully come to pass. But in itself it is not of fundamental importance. Providing the service levels is the key.”