PrimAvia, formerly Avia Carriers, has moved its base from Farnborough to London Luton airport. The company was the first to move into Luton's new hangar and offices.\rThe company acts as a corporate flight department for a Russian media and banking corporation based in Moscow. EBAN spoke to Bob Frith, chief pilot, about the reasons for the move.\r"Farnborough's operating hours were too restrictive, and the engineering set-up was not sufficient, although it has improved since we left," said Frith. "At the time, we were flying an early Challenger, and Farnborough didn't have sufficient people. We did most of our engineering at Luton - we have our own engineer based here - but flew in and out of Farnborough. It was inconvenient." Metro's engineering department at Luton has expanded from four Challenger engineers in 1998 to 11 currently. In the first half of 1999, Metro performed 132 maintenance jobs on this type of aircraft.\r"We were hoping that when TAG took over Farnborough, they might be able to get an extension of operating hours, but this did not materialise. We seem to do a lot of flying late at night and early in the morning. We need 24-hour operations, which we get at Luton." Frith continued. \rThe opening hours at Farnborough brought about the move, but Frith was quick to assert his affection for the airport: "To be fair, we did enjoy flying out of Farnborough, it's a very nice little airfield with a good atmosphere," he said.\rLen Rayment of Farnborough Airport gave EBAN his view on PrimAvia's decision to move to Luton: "We at TAG never gave any indication to any customer that we would get any improvement on our current hours. \r"However, I think the prime problem that PrimAvia had here was the fact that we are a prior permission airfield in terms of immigration and customs. We are not a designated airport so we have to give prior notification to customs and immigration of passenger manifest details, and that is something PrimAvia had a problem with because of the nature of their operation. Plus the fact that their passengers tended to be late, which necessitated late flying. I understood perfectly when they said they had to go," Rayment said. \rPrimAvia presently operates a Gulfstream IV-SP and a later model Challenger 601 fitted with 3A engines, and it occasionally leases a Hawker to back up the aircraft when they need maintenance. The aircraft fly European, transatlantic and Caribbean missions, as well as the occasional foray into the Far East and Israel.\rAccording to Frith, the company's schedule is slowing down in the run-up to Christmas: "Historically, we go through a fairly quiet period now, but at one stage we were averaging 1,000 flight hours per aircraft per year. We are a little bit more intensive than the average executive operation." EBAN's enquiries support this claim; when Claire Lynam of Metro Aviation's marketing department was contacted for photographs of PrimAvia's fleet, she was unable to help, commenting that "the aircraft are never there".