British European Aviation, based at Wycombe Airpark near London, has recently purchased a Piper M600 turbine as the latest addition to its fleet of four turbine aircraft flown on Heli Air's SET AOC. The aircraft will be available to charter through BEA subsidiary EscapeTime, which was launched in March this year. “The Piper M600 SLS was the obvious choice as it provides very cost-effective private charter whilst affording the same comfort, luxury and operating performance of light jets,” says CEO Sean Brown. “The low operating costs of the Piper M600 have resulted in charter quotes typically being two-thirds the price of comparable jet operations. In addition, the M600 can provide the owner with sensible operating costs using the BEA lease back scheme, which we have been operating for over 20 years and now has over 80 machines on the scheme. This means the owner has first call availability but instead of the aircraft sitting around costing money when the owner isn’t flying, we are generating revenue. Typically, owners are paying less than GBP10,000 per year operating costs and can take advantage of the potential tax benefits of ownership.”

The latest M600 is fully equipped to operate single pilot in the most demanding conditions and features air-conditioning for hot destinations and full de-icing and weather radar for cold operations. These features were fully tested on the delivery flight from Piper's factory in Vero Beach, Florida via Bangor, Maine prior to arriving in a drizzly Oxford.

Brown continues: “We have been operating the Piper M600 on charter flights since March 2020 through our subsidiary company Heli Air, which has held an AOC for over 20 years, and can uniquely offer door to door charter on short or long routes using a mixed fleet of helicopters and aeroplanes. For example, a customer can be picked up from the central London Heliport in a Twin Squirrel and flown to Wycombe before transferring to the M600, and then they can be in Venice two-and-a-half hours later.”

BEA has seen strong growth in Piper M600 usage with its ability to provide a cost-effective solution to the traffic problems in the UK on short routes such as London Wycombe to Manchester, Newcastle and Scotland. In addition the reduction of grey charter due to the UK CAA's campaign Fly Legal has meant neither owners or pilots have been willing to undertake such charters when the risks of such activities have been highlighted.

“There is no doubt aviation faces a challenging future,” admits Brown. “However, the demand for private travel as a way of reducing exposure to COVID-19, even on short UK flights, has shown a significant increase. Our five-year investment in obtaining an SET AOC and a 50-year lease at Wycombe means we are ideally placed to offer a round-the-clock private charter service at a sensible cost. We are confident of further growth as we are seeing increases in all other areas of our operations in helicopter and fixed wing aircraft such as contracts, pilot training, sales, engineering and hangarage.”