Entering the basement below FAI’s maintenance hangars at Nuremberg’s airport, you realise why the German operator has established its enviable reputation in the air ambulance world over three decades. Next to a well-stocked pharmacy is a storeroom with three EpiShuttle isolation pods, a transparent shell covered stretcher with its own oxygen and air ventilation system. FAI was the first in Europe to invest in the product, which proved a boon during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“No competitor has a wider range of medical services on board,” says Siegfried Axtmann, chairman and founder of FAI Aviation Group. “We offer a turnkey service bedside to bedside.” With its own team of doctors and paramedics, and a dedicated medevac fleet of five Bombardier Challenger 604s and five Learjet 60s, the business specialises in long-distance medical transfers on behalf of corporate, government and insurance firm customers, with a significant presence in the Middle East.
Medevac is the biggest of FAI’s three divisions, representing close to €50 million ($54 million) of almost €130 million revenues in 2022. A maintenance, repair and overhaul arm, FAI Technik – bolstered this year by the addition of a maintenance base in Berlin specialising in Beechcraft, Gulfstream and Hawker types – will bring in some €25 million this year. Meanwhile, charter and aircraft management businesses have revenues of around €30 million and €15 million respectively.
Six years ago, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat took a “significant minority stake” in FAI, which has helped the German company “develop deep routes” in the region, says Axtmann. The company has had a sales office in Dubai for 20 years and around a fifth of its business comes from the Middle East. FAI is an official supplier to the McLaren Formula 1 team, which is majority-owned by Mumtalakat.
With an all-Bombardier fleet and an in-house and third party maintenance operation at Nuremberg reflecting that loyalty, FAI had until recently no intention to expand elsewhere in Germany – not least in the capital where the Canadian manufacturer already had an in-house service facility. However, an unexpected opportunity to move into brands outside Bombardier came up when Berlin-based Hawker Beechcraft specialist BBA filed for bankruptcy in 2022.
While FAI has not bought the business itself, it has acquired its assets, including its 4,700sq m (50,000sq ft) premises at Berlin Brandenburg airport, and taken on 30 staff, almost all the former workforce. FAI has expanded its own maintenance licences to include Hawker HS125 and Beechcraft Premier I/IA and King Air series aircraft, as well as most Gulfstream models. It will additionally offer aircraft-on-ground (AOG) services to Bombardier operators.
Distinct from the medevac fleet, FAI’s charter division, FAI Rent-a-Jet, operates five Global Express aircraft – one of which it can reconfigure as an air ambulance – and two more Learjet 60s. While medevac performed strongly in the pandemic, charter had a tougher time as Covid-19 restrictions curtailed travel. However, from late 2021, demand for business and leisure trips soared, and only began to tail off in the final quarter of 2022 as inflation fears dampened business confidence.
Axtmann says having the three separate businesses helped the group through the pandemic and its aftermath, although medevac has been consistent throughout, helped by repatriation flights early in the crisis and steady requests for medical transfers, often from the Gulf to specialist hospitals in Europe and North America. The contribution from the Berlin MRO aside, Axtmann expects revenues this year to be around the same as 2022, with headwinds continuing to affect the charter business.
Although FAI’s charter unit relies on selling through brokers, what sets it apart, says Axtmann, is the group’s reputation as an uncompromising special mission operator, built on the back of its medevac activities. “Almost all our charter is intercontinental. We don’t really operate within Europe,” he says. “We often go into countries the average operator cannot because they don’t have the insurance – taking NGOs [non-governmental organisations] into hot spots, for instance.”
On medevac, FAI is evaluating its fleet needs, with a disposal of its Learjet 60s possible. The issue, he says, is not their vintage – they are between 20 and 25 years old – but that the small-cabin segment is highly competitive and their direct operating costs are not much less than the Challenger 604’s. “We have not decided our future model,” says Axtmann. “We are looking at Embraers and Learjet 75s, but there is a chance we leave the small jet sector entirely and concentrate on larger aircraft.”
While the roughly 2,000nm (3,700km)-range Learjet 60s can perform intercontinental missions with fuel stops, many clients want direct flights and the larger interior that the 3,700nm-range Challenger 604 offers, he says. Additionally, because the Challenger 604’s GE Aerospace CF34 is a commercial engine – it powers Bombardier and Embraer regional jets – maintenance costs are much lower than on the Learjets.
