Holland’s Excellent Air is on the verge of opening a new maintenance facility at Schiphol Airport. Ceo Rainald Schulte told EBAN why the company has decided on such a move. He said: “This is completely in line with our expansion strategy. We’ve opted to build the facility because of growing demands on serviceability and fleet performance.”

The company has constructed a new hangar which has an area of 1,700 square metres and will be used for line and base maintenance on Excellent’s own fleet. The company is also welcoming third parties who visit Amsterdam airport or have Amsterdam as their home base. Shops will also be expanded in order to meet the requirements for becoming a Garret and Williams engine service centre.

Said Schulte: “We expect to have implemented our JAR 145 certificate during the first quarter of 2002. Due to the fact that we are capable of attracting highly qualified and experienced personnel with long histories in the aviation industry, we found the certification process fairly simple. We see the certificate

as a complementary step in our quality strategy.”

Excellent Air’s owns its whole charter fleet which consists of four Citation 525s, three Citation 560s, one 550, three 650s and two Hawker 800. Asked about further fleet growth in the near future, Schulte said:

“We are looking towards the additional management of third party owned aircraft.”

Post September 11, Schulte says the company has experienced some slowdown in its market but this mainly from its US customers. In 2002, he said: “We will rapidly continue our growth expectations as from before September 11th, where our product will meet the growing market requirements.”