London Executive Aviation (LEA) has taken delivery of its fourth managed Citation Excel. The Luton-based aircraft joins two Bravos, three Citation IIs and two King Airs, which are based at Stansted, Farnborough, Luton and Biggin Hill airports.

Explaining the choice of aircraft, md George Galanopolous said: “We were the first to bring the Excel into the UK in 2001, and it went off to a slow start. We were quite disappointed because it didn’t pick up as quickly as we had expected, but since then we have been extremely busy with every Excel flying about 25 days per month.”

The latest fleet addition, which will be joined by another Bravo in the near future, has been operated commercially since May 11 and has flown every day since.

The aircraft owner has been a client of LEA for four years. The company was operating the owner’s Citation II, which it has since purchased and absorbed into the fleet, and sourced the Excel once the client chose to upgrade.

With such a large fleet, the operational benefits of consistent Citation additions are clear, says Galanopolous. “We like to standardise the fleet to keep things simple, and crew training becomes a lot easier if you have a common fleet.

“All of the Citations are approved for London City Airport operations, which is one of our main locations, and they’re fairly economical to run. That doesn’t mean we won’t take on a different type of aircraft if the opportunity arises, especially if it is larger than the Excel.”

LEA anticipates that the nine-seat Excel will spend most of the summer weekends flying its owner to Cannes, noting that Nice, Malaga and Palma are the most popular destinations for ad hoc charter flights.

Galanopolous has noticed a definite shift in demand of late; whereas its flights used to be split on an 80:20 ratio in favour of business over leisure, today more than 30 per cent of flights are for leisure trips, and the figure is rising.

“Companies use business aircraft for their business purposes, but the real increase in demand has come from private individuals buying aircraft or blocks of hours,” he said. The company operates a flight commitment programme, offering 25 hours of flight at a reduced rate, which has proven popular since its introduction six months ago.

“I think the market in general has been very good. Talking to operators in Cannes, they are also getting lots of enquiries. I think it’s a combination of the Dollar being so weak and the fact that there is a lot of disposable income around and people value their time more.”

To accommodate the business boom, LEA has employed two additional crew members. All of its pilots are trained at FlightSafety and the company is eager to cut travelling time for training by utilising FlightSafety’s new Farnborough training centre.

“We will do all of our training there, as it’s very time consuming at the moment. We just sent someone over [to the US] for recurrent training, which takes four days, plus an additional three days for travel and resting. The Farnborough base will be very useful for us.”