"Business is good," says Harrods Aviation CEO Steve Grimes.
"We've had three good, consistent years of progress, turnover is growing, and
our costs are nicely under control."
Harrods' corporate jet handling market share "has grown
massively" at London's Luton Airport since it gained the NetJets handling
contract. Before the two-year deal came into effect, Harrods held 35% of
corporate movements at Luton. That has since jumped to 65%. This has directly
reversed the situation with Signature when they held the contract, Grimes
confirmed.
"After nearly 10 months completed we haven't any issues or
service failures and we're very happy working with NetJets, who are growing at
35% per year. Our spin-off work has increased, and we've doubled our fuel
capacity to meet sales demands," he told Show News.
Grimes says that FBO business is the most profitable sector
of the company's operations at Luton and Stansted airports.
Harrod's third FBO, which was London-Heathrow-based, was
sold to the BBA Group (parent of Signature) earlier this year. "We sold our
Heathrow FBO in January, as we could not see a future there because of
diminishing slot availability," notes Grimes. Heathrow has had a growing
problem with corporate aircraft slot availability since the airline sector recovery
following the post-9/11 slump.
At Stansted Harrods is seeing steady growth and has a 75%
share of the corporate aircraft movement market there. The growth in
corporate/governmental movements is between 0-5% annually, according to Grimes.
The majority of the company's business there is in handling the widebody
aircraft operated by Middle Eastern royal families.
Harrods' TFE-731 engine shop at TAG's Farnborough site now
looks after 230 of these very popular engines and is a "nice, profitable niche
business in which we have a great relationship with Honeywell," says Grimes.
Harrods' Luton engineering link with Lufthansa Technik for
AOG support, among other services, is also going well, especially with the
Boeing BBJ-associated work. "We are looking at fresh new ideas working with
LHT, but I can't release details as yet," Grimes disclosed.
Harrods Aviation became the Sikorsky sales and distribution
agent for the UK and Ireland last year, and has since completed the interior of
its first S-92 VIP aircraft. Grimes says he is hungry for more of this work.
"We are planning to develop a helicopter completions center; we're tooled up
and have the capability."
Last year Harrods had hoped to open its first non-UK FBO at
Paris-Le Bourget. The company got close to acquiring an operator this year, but
the deal fell through. Undeterred, Grimes says, "We've decided we will make an
acquisition at Le Bourget and are in discussions at the moment."
Harrods is a Embraer Legacy sales and distribution agent for
the UK and Ireland. The company delivered its first Legacy earlier this year
and will deliver two more in early 2006. "Legacys are selling well, but we need
Embraer to release more airframes for the Legacy program to cut the wait to
below a year," says Grimes.
