Aircraft sales and management company Hamlin Jet has joined forces with Northern Executive Aviation (NEA), based at Manchester, to open a line maintenance and warranty support service centre at London-Luton Airport.

Managing director Mike Hamlin told EBAN: “Initially we’re starting small so we will offer all manner

of line services and smaller scheduled inspections.

“NEA are the factory-authorised service centre for all Learjet models for the UK, so this approval will follow them down to Luton. We have a number of Learjets in our managed fleet so it’s very advantageous to us,” he added.

The company decided to open the facility, which can house up to four aircraft simultaneously, in response to requests for greater maintenance services from its existing clients. “We do most of the minor maintenance on our own managed fleet and we were flying the aircraft to NEA in Manchester for the larger scheduled inspections of 600 and 1,200 hours,” said Hamlin.

“Maintenance was not an area I wanted to go into on my own, so I thought the best idea would be to provide the floor space and get somebody whose prime function is engineering to come in as a partner,” he continued. “The obvious one to turn to was the company who did the heavy maintenance on the Learjets in our fleet, and it took us about 10 minutes to decide it was a good idea.

“We’ve had a great deal of encouragement form Learjet to do this because they don’t really want to appoint a second service centre in the UK.”

Hamlin chose London-Luton as the site for the facility as he noticed a lack of service facilities available to operators of small business jets. “There is a bit of a void for everything from Citations to Lears and Hawkers and even Falcons; there is no specific support centre for them,” he said. “Whilst we can’t be all things to all men, we started off giving comprehensive cover for one type of aircraft and we’ll work from there.

“I would say, in our first two weeks we’ve had a most encouraging level of support. From NEA’s perspective, what they’re hoping to do is service their London-based clients better from Luton, whereas the major inspections will still be done in their Manchester facility.”