FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1971
1971 - 0065.PDF
60 Industry International FLIGHT International, 14 January 1971 DIVERSITY AT SOUTHEND ' Freighter conversions, jet aircraft maintenance, the manufacture of ground support equipment— these are all part of the day's work for Aviation Traders Ltd at Southend. DAVID WOOLLEY examines the company's activity. IT is A CURRENT TREND in Britain's independent air transport industry to invest in long-haul jets Airlines which are not necessarily newcomers to jet operations but which have hitherto specialised in short-haul fly ing, particularly in the mass tour mar ket, are one by one becoming the proud possessors of CAB foreign- carrier permits and (as a rule) Boeing 707s. They have been encouraged to take this step both by the buoyancy of the market and by the prices of second-hand aircraft, of which a large number are becoming available. A problem which confronts any small airline introducing jets is that of engineering. One answer is to turn your overhaul and maintenance over to another airline. This in theory should benefit both sides; the operator of the aircraft avoids the capital in vestment involved in setting up an engineering base, while for the engineering contractor there is the opportunity to improve the utilisation of his own engineering shops, and thus to off-load some of the overheads which would otherwise devolve on his own airline operations. But in practice the danger is that, however fair- minded he is, the contractor will tend to give preference to his own aircraft. Of two other alternatives, one—the formation of a technical consortium or co-operative of a number of air lines, perhaps along the lines of KSSU—is attractive in the long term, but involves complicated planning and ground-work, and is no solution for a small and flexible airline responding to a particular market situation. The remaining possiblity is to take your aircraft to a specialist engineer ing firm. In the big-jet field such com panies are few and far between, but one which has identified this particu lar need and is going all out to meet it is Aviation Traders (Engineering) Ltd (ATEL) at Southend. In fact the company claims by far the largest share of the British market for con tracted-out maintenance of jets (ex cluding executive jets); among its customers are Lloyd International and British Midland, both with three-year contracts. But this activity is only a part of the Aviation Traders picture. The company is remarkably diverse—one
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
