Farnborough Airport’s Gama Aviation has recently taken on a Hawker 800A on a management contract and a Hawker 800B for charter operations. In addition to this, the company has also added a Challenger 601.

“The 800B is one that used to be with Signature at Luton, but we’ve taken on the management of it,” said project manager Dave Edwards. “The 800A is a privately-managed aircraft for one of our customers and we got it by bidding against a series of other operators.”

The company also owns a Hawker 1000 and has been running a Hawker 800 for the past 18 months. The 1000 has been in operation since May 2002.

“The Hawker is just a great aircraft; it’s still one of the most popular aircraft on the mid-sized cabin aircraft charter market,” he enthused. “On the management side of business, we’ll take on any aircraft,” he said. Both aircraft are now based at Farnborough airport.

“There’s always demand for Hawkers from brokers and direct clients,” he continued.

“We have one particular client who likes the Hawker very much and who has utilised it quite a lot since we took it on. It’s pretty popular in general,” he added.

“We took on the most recent Hawker, the 800B, at the end of October. It’s in the States at the moment, having a full refurbishment of the interior and a new paint scheme on the exterior. It’s also having a Satcom system fitted,” he continued. “It’s going to have an upgraded entertainment system; the system on it at the moment is a decent 90s’ system, but it’s going to be brought up to date with a DVD, Airshow and all the mod-cons.

“We’re slowly starting to bring a theme into the exterior paint-work of some of our aircraft and this Hawker is going to be modified to be like that,” he said.

“It will be in a grey and red colour scheme. It’s not definite that we’ll implement it fully yet, but it appeared on one of our management aircraft to begin with and it’s such a striking scheme that has promoted so much comment everywhere we’ve gone, we’re actively considering it.”

The Challenger 601 is owned by a Formula 1 racing team, the colour scheme and logo on the tail giving this away because it is in the shape of a motor-racing car.

“It is an understated exterior but it has the team colours incorporated into it,” he explained. “It’s predominantly white, but with blue and yellow cheek lines. When it’s not flying for the team, it is available for charter,” he said. “It was refurbished when it came to us during last summer.

“The team actually picked the aircraft,” he said. “It’s a good aircraft for the routes that they’re doing for their racing.

“It has adequate range to cover the European Grand Prix and it’s only a one-stop aircraft to get over to America, which the team principal needs to do for business. It’s just an ideal aircraft.” He added: It has the perfect cabin, it’s reasonably priced and it provides exactly what they were looking for.

“The proving flight with the CAA was only done a month ago, but we had a charter request booked before the certificate was even issued! So it’s looking good, especially with us having done practically no advertising up until this point,” he explained. “We have some broker days coming up and we will be promoting this aircraft.”

Edwards believes that the aircraft fills a niche gap and that it is going to have good availability, apart from on race weekends, when it will be in quite heavy demand.

“The team tend to go out midweek and come back after the race, so there’s even scope to still charter and to go out to a Formula 1 race if the aircraft isn’t flying,” he said.

“I don’t think it has any competition. I think the one thing that’s missing, if you ask any broker in the UK, is wide-bodied charter aircraft,” he insisted. “I think more aircraft will definitely follow. We’ve just signed a contract to operate a Challenger 604, which will hopefully come in at the beginning of the summer and it will be on the UK charter market from then on.

“We’ve also installed SATCOM on our Lear 45 fleet, which will be rolled out across all the Hawker’s as well over the next few months.” He concluded: “We’re trying to get to a position where the whole charter fleet has satellite communications.”