The brand new Citation Excel which will be arriving at Aviation Beauport – on the island of Jersey – in June, is the first new aeroplane the company has ordered in 20 years. During that time, the company has contented itself with the services of a trusty Citation II. However, with the pressing needs of local businessmen who have property in places such as Palma, Tenerife and Portugal, the Excel is due to come into its own.

Greg Graham told EBAN: “I made the decision about three years ago when I first got information on the Excel. To my mind, this is the aeroplane of the next 10 years – particularly for a Northern European type operation. I think it will be incredibly successful. Everything about it is right and although aircraft like the Lear 45 are a bit quicker, I believe the Excel will be the one that shines through.”

He continued: “It sits right on the line. The price is right, the build quality is right, the cabin’s right, its range is about right and the speed’s okay. I’ll admit that it’s not the best in any one field but if you take all the averages, it’s the best compromise. And I think that will mean – like the Citation II – it will be a very successful aeroplane.”

A typical charter mission for Aviation Beauport’s existing Citation II is to Paris, London or Birmingham. Even though it’s capable of flying quite a bit farther, customers generally visit these locations a lot more frequently than more distant ones. With the Excel, Graham believes charters to Northern Europe and North Africa will become quite commonplace and yet ‘the aircraft still makes good sense if you do a 20-minute hop to the UK’.

Said Graham: “I expect to get quite a lot of enquiries from the UK – which we don’t currently get on the II – mainly because of the extra range. I’m hoping that the DOCs on it will be good to the point where we’ll end up with longer range charters probably from the UK. We have had enquiries on it already, even though its delivery is months away yet.”

In spite of the great expense involved in keeping the Citation II in operation, Graham has decided to keep it rather than trade up. He said: “We’ve owned the Citation II since new so we did want to try and keep it on if we could. It’s our primary ambulance aircraft off the islands and we’ve got a good Citation II market here. The aircraft is currently being upgraded. I’m putting equipment in it to take it right through to 2005 on compliance, so we’re putting in GPWS, RVSM, flight data recorder etc.

“We’re spending an absolute fortune on this aeroplane and it’s just dead money as far as I’m concerned because it doesn’t enable us to do any more than we were doing two years ago. It just enables us to carry on doing what we’ve been doing for the last 25 years.”

Meanwhile, Aviation Beauport’s FBO is desperately short of hangarage space and for this reason is planning the addition of a new hangar in 18 months time. Said Graham: “It’s pretty early days. While the planning application has been approved, it has gone through with a number of caveats. We’re sure we can get around them but we haven’t done the full development, drawings and analysis as such yet.

“The hangar will be about 55,000 square feet, which is slightly bigger than the one we’ve currently got. It will be just hangarage – no engineering or offices.”