Also new to JetNetherlands’ fleet are a Falcon 900B and Falcon 20. The former was purchased by a private owner who carries out regular flights to central Africa, and will have a similar charter outlook to the 2000EX. The latter is also a private purchase but will spend the vast majority of its time in full charter mode.

EBAN’s Richard Evans spoke to managing director Willem de Kruif a couple of days after the company had taken delivery of the Falcon 2000EX, on behalf of its private owner.

De Kruif enthused: “We only bought it four weeks ago and it’s already flying now. The owner does a lot of really long-haul flights and decided that he wanted a widebody aircraft that would reduce his operating costs and that would be commercially viable in the market.”

The owner was previously operating a Falcon 50EX but soon realised he would be carrying more passengers than he had at first anticipated. When it became apparent that the demonstrator was available for sale, Willem says the owner jumped at the chance to trade in his existing jet.

De Kruif explained: “The owner was looking for a new aircraft fast, so this was the perfect solution. Also, he was delighted that it had 10 seats – which was also an important issue to us – and the interior was exactly to his liking.

“He makes a lot of flights to California (although we still need a tech stop for that particular trip) and India but the major issue for him was the East Coast of the US. We can serve that non-stop with this aircraft.”

A pilot himself, Willem de Kruif says he didn’t look much beyond the 2000EX before advising his client that this was the right choice. He said: “I’ve been looking at the 2000s for a while and the show-stopper

with the EX is the range. So for this aircraft, we didn’t do a really big study on the alternatives.

“The purchase price was also a key factor, as was the fact that the 2000 is a known type in Holland. Conversely, there are no civil-registered Gulfstreams here so just to implement a Gulfstream would have been a far more complicated task.”

De Kruif says he has no idea why Gulfstreams are not commonplace in Holland. “I used to fly one myself,” he continued “a military-registered GIV, but that was seven or eight years ago. I never see any Gulfstream representation over here.”

With regard to the issue of customer support, de Kruif says Jet Netherlands has a very good working relationship with Dassault and also with the Cessna service centres, who he says “make an effort about serving customers.”

The company currently has seven aircraft, ranging from a CJ1 up the 2000EX. For the time being, says de Kruif, it is happy to stick to Citation and Falcon aircraft although he doesn’t rule out Gulfstream, Bombardier or any other manufacturer, should the opportunity arise.

JetNetherlands expects the owner to fly around 250 hours a year in the 2000EX, with another fixed customer taking a further 200 hours. However, as it’s all long-haul travel, the company will still have the aeroplane available for general charter, for between 20 and 25 weeks a year. 75 per cent of trips are expected to be to the US and of the remaining quarter, most are likely to be Far East-bound and the rest within Europe.

While the 2000EX is making plenty of private trips right now, it is yet to be placed on JetNetherlands commercial AOC. With hard work, the company is aiming to have it available for charter by the beginning of February, although as de Kruif says, the workload in the company is extremely high at the moment.