Cambridge International airport, UK, is welcoming business aviation charter operator Blu Halkin as its fifth based AOC operator. The company celebrated its maiden flight from Cambridge to Milan with its Citation CJ3 at the end of August.

The company's second base is in northern Italy, but it selected Cambridge as its UK home owing to the airport's business aviation maintenance expertise and its ground handling capabilities.

Commercial director for Blu Halkin Daniele Scaglia says: “We are excited to be positioning our first aircraft in the UK, close to the beautiful and historic city of Cambridge. The airport's growing business aviation hub and its strengthened business aviation capabilities are highly attractive to us as an operator. We plan to add a further Citation aircraft to the fleet this year followed by a longer range aircraft in 2014, enabling us to reach the USA and the Middle East.

“The management at Cambridge was pushing to have a new AOC and operator, as it is looking to develop further. Darwin Airlines is here now as well and has started operations to Milan and Amsterdam. This all adds to the appeal.”

Scaglia explains an important element of the decision: “We chose the UK over other countries because the UK register is the most important register in Europe, regarding aviation. In the aviation world, the G register is much more recognised when compared with the Italian register. All the clients and brokers appreciate that we manage an aircraft with G registration.”

The UK CAA can be tricky to deal with, says Scaglia, but that is run with the utmost professionalism: “The people from the CAA are very serious and very demanding. They are strict, but if you do what they say there is no problem and the company can move ahead without problems.

“We have many bureaucratic people around aviation and every time it is difficult to proceed, in every way. That is another reason why it is good to have G registration.

“We can move our operation forward without huge problems and just to show to the UK CAA what we have to do and what we have done, plus what we will do for the future. We've had a lot of audits from the CAA, the organisation is very close to us.”

If the company has any problems or questions, Scaglia reports that the CAA will reply very quickly, which is very important. “The UK CAA is fantastic for that,” he says.

Blu Halkin has not completely cut ties with its homeland: “We are Italian so previously we were based in the north of Italy. The airport is Cuneo International, near Turin. We still have a hangar over there that we use just to recover the aircraft just in case we need it,” Scaglia concludes.