Following its record year, charter broker Air Charter Service is to expand operations in its two offices in California. Driving this growth is the newly promoted and highly-experienced Maddison Gerhardt, who is now ACS director of private jets for the state.
Leading the team across the company's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices, Gerhardt says: “The private aviation market in California was always buoyant pre-pandemic, boasting the most amount of departures of any state, before the obvious drop-off following the onset of Covid. Since that slump we've seen a real bounce back in the past 12 months with the return of the entertainment industry and business travellers flying again. Sales grew considerably, and last year we saw nine per cent growth on 2019's pre-pandemic levels, compared to the market, which saw only four per cent growth on overall departures in the state.
“Our jet card product, a pre-paid account with funds held on account, has seen sales skyrocket across the US; up by 127 per cent year-on-year. We saw a lot of new customers turn to private aviation during the pandemic, and we are now seeing many of them upgrade to a jet card as a way to secure aircraft availability in a challenging market for fleet operators.”
ACS California CEO Thomas Howe adds: “We are looking to recruit talented aviation professionals to grow the team and drive forward from our record year and a strong first quarter to this one. With scheduled services not expected to fully return to pre-pandemic levels for several years, private aviation is going to continue to be in high demand for the foreseeable future.”
Air Charter Service has seven other offices across North America, along with LA and San Francisco, and 28 globally. The company arranges larger passenger aircraft and cargo charters, as well as private jets and last year recorded revenues of $1.8 billion. In early 2020 ACS launched its carbon offset scheme, offsetting at least 100 per cent of emissions on private jet flights.