JUSTIN WASTNAGE / BANGALORE
Indian aviation services company Aviators plans to start operating the country's first fractional ownership programme in the fourth quarter with a mix of turboprops and jets.
Aviators, based in Bangalore, is to take delivery of the first of three superlight Cessna Citation Excels in November and plans to put three Pilatus PC-12 high-speed single-engined turboprops into the scheme at the same time. Managing director Arun Sharma says 18 months after launching the programme, the company has received expressions of interest for over 4,000h across the two aircraft types. Aviators aims to convert this interest into final investments and expects to have fully sold the first aircraft by the end of March, with the remaining five fully sold, Sharma says, by the end of the year.
"The programme mirrors NetJets almost exactly," he adds, with a 50h, one-sixteenth share in the Citation Excel costing Rs66.6 million ($1.33 million) and the aircraft operated under Aviators' air operator's certificate. Jet owners will be able to interchange occupied hours with the PC-12, which can be used to access remote airfields. Sharma says: "Indian businesses have diversified as they have become conglomerates and often have acquired operations in remote locations."
Businesses are increasingly seeing the value of corporate aviation, he adds, aided by generous asset depreciation regulations permitting companies to write off 93% of the asset's value against tax over the five-year contract. Sharma also points to a lack of business jets available for charter - India has only two.
Aviators estimates that the Citation Excel is able to access 87% of India's 171 usable air fields, with the PC-12 able to access close to 100%.
The company previously considered the Raytheon Hawker 800XP and Bombardier Learjet 60, but rejected them due to their runway- length requirements. Aviators, the Pilatus distributor for India, says that the programme's response time of 12h will be sufficient for its initial fleet, with most of its business coming from Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and Mumbai, but that the programme's flexibility could be compromised in the short term, before critical mass is achieved. Sharma says he has approached major US fractional schemes to offer supplemental lift within India, when required.
Source: Flight International
