The ongoing financial crisis affecting most of Europe, coupled with the mass of new regulations that continue to emanate from Brussels, is placing more and more financial pressure on the small and medium size AOC operators. So says UK charter operator Perfect Aviation as it urges its peers to consider the benefits of collaboration.

Perfect Aviation believes that, if operators are to survive, the time has come for some innovative thinking. It has therefore announced a new flight planning and AOC support service.

Business development manager Paul Forster explains: "We are pleased to offer this service to third-party operators who are seeking to reduce or contain their costs.

"We have a highly trained team of professional and fully licensed INAC/EASA aircraft dispatchers who are available on a 24/7 basis to oversee all aspects of flight planning, flight following and operational support. Our concept is to provide an AOC competent dispatch department to third party operators pursuant to a service level agreement."

Forster adds: "Flight planning and flight following and reporting functions will be provided to operators as if it were being made through their own flight dispatch department. With full competency in respect of EASA flight crew regulations and other relevant regulations, Perfect can provide a real cost saving to operators requiring a 24/7 flight operations function but perhaps struggling to justify the costs of employing staffing to cover it.

"Since I joined Perfect one of the most impressive areas that I have noted is our dispatch team, they have never failed to obtain permits or over-flight clearances, some of which have been in very remote or difficult areas. The team has always been totally up-to-date on everything that is happening around the globe and this type of service is vital for every flight crew member and to the operator wanting to ensure the very best levels of service to the client." Clients will have immediate real-time secure access to their planning and regulatory data via a bespoke data-centric web based flight management software system.

Perfect believes that by working together operators will benefit from reduced overheads while gaining access to a larger fleet of aircraft and additional joint resources.

Forster continues: "It is going to take several years for our market to recover fully and quite frankly, unless they take appropriate action, some operators will not survive. At the moment we have too many operators chasing too few clients and aircraft management fees are much weaker. Operators are slashing prices to win jobs in order to tread water. That is not a great strategy, as it presents false expectations of prices to the clients and ultimately damages the recovery of pricing.

"Many are worried about handing client information to their proposed partners; I would counter that by saying that we have all been working with brokers for a very long time and the professional operators have never had an issue. We all know where our business comes from, so to poach a client would be commercial suicide and the same would obviously apply to working with a partner company.

"We are talking to both AOC operators and private individuals. It is ideal for the private operator who would like the level of support you get from commercial operations but without the massive monthly bill associated with some of the large organisations," Forster concludes.