Oriens.qxp_Master Page GA 05/07/2019 14:38 Page 1
Pilatus Class -
Edwin Brenninkmeyer Founder & CEO, Oriens Aviation
Personalised Service for a Fast-Changing Environment
General and business aviation is an often-undervalued commodity. Before becoming fully immersed in the sector professionally, I was heavily involved in my family’s retail business. I would regularly take my Cessna 210 to fly colleagues to prospective sites. The convenience of the aircraft enabled us to visit stores in remote parts of Central Europe, in the most time-efficient manner. My colleagues liked the fact that we always got home at night. Not only was the 210 a terrific time-saving tool, it was complementary to the pressures of family life too. No need for long drives, time-wasting and tiring connecting flights and delayed airline schedules. That Cessna 210 was small, lacked facilities and was very expensive to run; but the late 1970s built piston-engined aircraft was tried and trusted – the forerunner of the modern turboprop singles of today. It also influenced the path we are forging today at Oriens Aviation with our traditional flagship the Pilatus PC-12 and now the PC-24. Our mission is for our customers to ‘Get More out of Life.’ My experience flying the 210 was my own invaluable ‘grass roots’ experience of aircraft maintenance, as a customer. The aircraft was aging and complex and demanded constant maintenance. My own demanding travel schedule conflicted with this and gave me a heightened sense of what is important for customers. At the same time, there is a commercial drive towards scale economies, as MROs consolidate. OEMs are buying up bigger independent MROs, some of whom are themselves getting out of General Aviation altogether, while experienced and long serving MROs are buying up rivals. The challenge is maintaining a high standard to personalised service. The drive to deliver the best in customer service and be a one-stop, go-to base, is fundamental to engendering new and repeat business. Our organisational size and age allows us to set standards and culture for future growth now. We are therefore able to give maintenance inspections complete focus and attention. It also enables us to be flexible and if the customer wants something specific, we make every effort to achieve that, as we are not bound by ‘big company’ processes, put in place to serve a large volume of customers. Each customer is unique, and we try to understand this and cater for it accordingly. We are pleased with how business has been received one year after establishing our Pilatus Service Centre at London Biggin Hill Airport. Customers appreciate we can support them, far beyond handing over the keys to a shiny new aircraft. Our expansion into MRO through the acquisition of Avalon Aero’s Biggin Hill base late in 2017, was timely. There is a swelling critical mass of Pilatus PC-12s in the British Isles – over 30 aircraft now, and growing. Many of these operate from little more than small, general aviation aerodromes in and around the British Isles. We are pleased to be delivering our 12th PC-12 in July to a private customer.
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Our MRO team, headed by Stuart Locke, who joined us from TAG Aviation in Farnborough last January, and his team, now look after 20-plus PC-12s. It is a well-known issue that business aviation is being squeezed out of major airports as low-cost carriers and the volumes of passengers (and revenue) they deliver far surpasses the average two to three passengers flying in by business jet. The beauty of the Pilatus PC-12 and PC-24, the Super Versatile Jet is that they do not need the long runways and infrastructure costs associated with large airports. If our aircraft and other types in the category can play a key part in keeping these under-threat small airfields sustainable, then this is a positive thing for aviation as a whole, creating jobs for young people as pilots and engineers, which our industry so desperately needs. At Oriens Aviation we are excited to be plotting our growth as a growing ‘business aviation services’ company. We fly and demo the aircraft for prospective customers; provide MRO and AOG remote support; we offer pilot training at London Biggin Hill in collaboration with Oysterair; and AOC advisory – following the relaxation of EASA rules in 2017. We are proud to be in a niche market – albeit one that is growing. Business Aviation in Europe accounts for just 5% of movements (source - European Business Aviation Association) and single-engine commercial flight and business jet operations to smaller airfields accounts for a small slice of that. But it is a growing market. This is why we are bolstering our engineering support – in readiness to support the PC-24 in the British Isles. Our engineers and technicians will be trained up on the PC-24, and we are adding an experienced instructor/examiner for the type. I am looking forward to flying the PC-24 myself, in due course. We recognise that the majority of existing PC-12 customers are ‘future’ new PC12 and PC-24 customers – who choose to upgrade and stay in the Pilatus family. No surprise that our first customer for the PC-24 in the UK is already a PC-12 operator. Being able to offer a one-stop shop for both aircraft is an important part of our business strategy. Oriens is Latin for ‘rising’ and ‘emerging’ and we are very pleased to be embarking on this journey alongside Pilatus, whose facilities in Stans, Switzerland have doubled in size and continue to grow with the recent re-opening of the Pilatus PC-24 orderbook in May this year. Edwin Brenninkmeyer, founder and CEO, Oriens Aviation For more information visit: www.oriensaviation.com
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