Belgium’s Flying Partners will soon be offering its first Falcon 2000 for charter. The aircraft, which came on to the company’s managed fleet in the middle of May, is currently in the process of being changed from the French to the Belgian register. Marketing manager Ben Paindavin said: “This is a totally new customer for us and the first Falcon we’ve been able to offer for charter. We already operate a Falcon 900C, but that’s not available for commercial use, so we’re now very happy to be in the position to offer our customers this type of range.”

The company anticipates that the owner will be getting a great deal of use out of his eight-passenger Falcon. “At the moment the owner’s flying between three and four times a week, but obviously part of this is down to it being a new toy for him. We’ll have to wait and see if this dies down, but we won’t be marketing or promoting it very hard aside from announcing that it’s available,” said Paindavin.

Flying Partners has been evaluating the market for transcontinental aircraft for the last year. Paindavin explained: “It’s difficult to predict the type of customer that will be chartering this latest aircraft because it’s a new market for us, so we’re not sure if it’s going to fly a lot. With the Cessnas, we’ve been used to the European market and it’s possible that the Falcon won’t be that easy to sell.

At the moment it depends on how often the owner is going to use it and if it will be available very much to charter customers.”

Prior to this addition Flying Partners has mainly been a Citation operator, involved with both fractional ownership and charter. “We’re obviously always looking for customers and initially tried to push this recent owner towards buying a fraction of an Excel. Yet it turned out that he wanted a larger aircraft because he has to do a number of trips to St Petersburg in Russia. As we already had a Falcon 900, we proposed a Dassault product and he liked the 2000.”

The aircraft will be based at the company’s Antwerp facilities, from where it will be making the regular trips over to Russia.

“If we compare our situation now with three or four years ago (when we just had a few Citations), our company literally seems to be selling itself. It’s becoming easier and easier to attract clients, so it’s anyone’s guess what will happen in the future. We already have some other new Falcon contacts and it’s possible that within the next six months we’ll be adding a third one,” said Paindavin.

Asked whether the company had to adapt its operations to incorporate another manufacturer’s aircraft, Paindavin said: “No, it’s been an easy transition. We still have a very good relationship with Cessna, but the problem was that they don’t have any aircraft like the Falcon 900 or 2000. All our pilots are currently in training for the aircraft, so we’re still flying with Dassault pilots, but in around two weeks it will be completely operated by us.”