Denmark-based Air Alsie has placed aircraft management orders for both a CJ2 and a Falcon 2000EX Easy. The delivery of the aircraft is expected to take place in 2004.

Vice president of sales, Peter Høgh told EBAN why these particular models were chosen.

“The need of the clients matched the aircraft in both cases,” he said. “The range of the Falcon 2000 especially, is one of the major reasons why the client chose that particular model. It was a very similar situation with the CJ2.

“The clients mainly needed the aircraft for business reasons,” he explained. The two management clients also allow the company to use the aircraft for charter.

“No other aircraft were really considered, not by ourselves and not by the clients either. We do operate Falcon aircraft already and we have been doing this for many years,” he said. “We do have two Falcon 2000’s in the fleet, which makes it more cost effective to stay within the Falcon family. It’s more flexible, both operational and maintenance-wise and the same goes for the Cessna. The owner of the Cessna already had a Citation jet, so this is a replacement for that and a step upwards.”

Høgh reports that the aircraft were both cost-effective choices, because of the cost of running them and the cost compared to the ad hoc charter market. “The price both to purchase them and to operate them makes it possible for us to compete in the charter market, which is a big issue for us and for the owner.”

Delivery of the CJ2 is expected in May and the Falcon 2000 will follow in September. “We do anticipate that the aircraft will be very popular with our current charter customers. We have the experience with the clients, we know that the aircraft will fit into the market we’re already operating in and with the clients we already have on our books,” he said.

“We will be operating the Falcon for charter approximately 60 per cent of the time and 40 per cent of the time it will be used by the owner, although it will be a bit less for the owner of the CJ2 – in that instance it will be more like 80-20 per cent.”

According to Høgh, both owners have operated or have had their own aircraft for a number of years. He believes that this was behind their decision to purchase their own aircraft, rather than to charter.

“The market in Scandinavia has changed over the last year. We are now signing up a lot of direct corporate contracts. We have been more effective in the market, trying to sell our company to them,” he said. “We still use our brokers and fully support our brokers outside Scandinavia and we do not approach any clients directly. For instance in the UK, we would never do that. But in Scandinavia, which is our home region, it’s a different story. One of the clients we have signed up with directly is the Prime Minister of Norway. We are now flying all of his official flights and he is not buying his own jet. I read in the newspaper that he was looking for a jet and I approached his people after hearing that,” he said.

“It’s difficult to look at the Danish charter market in any depth, because it’s rather small and isolated. Our market is mainly in Scandinavia and the UK,” he continued. “The Scandinavian market is slowly recovering from a recent downturn. We expect together with an upturn in the European economy, that there will be small growths in our production next year.”

He concluded: “There is a lot of competition here, but we combat that with quality, good service and punctuality in all of our operations.”