Arena Aviation, headquartered at Redhill Aerodrome, UK, is looking to add further aircraft to its fleet after being encouraged by the recovery of the European market. It has used Squirrels for television work for 19 years, and fixed wing is a more recent venture. Line training captain Steve Monk says: “We would possibly like to invest in a further XLS and increase our European presence.

“The market in the UK is showing signs of picking up without a doubt. I've been in the charter market now for six years, so I started just after the recession happened, and I was originally flying CJs around Europe. That side of the market has always been busy: I used to do about 600 hours a year. I think it has hit the people that were flying on a midsize aircraft like the Hawkers, and coming down on to the smaller aircraft. It didn't really affect the Global Express and Gulfstream people.”

The operator is taking increasing requests from parties of six, an ideal size for the XLS. Its current fleet comprises an XLS and a CJ.

Monk continues: “I think with the CJ you struggle to put more than four people on it if you want to go down to the south of Spain for example. With the XLS you can get six adults on this route no problem, and it has great runway performance as well.” The company is utilising RocketRoute flight planning technology to improve the efficiency of its operation.

“We can adjust plans in order to let our clients know if they are early or late. We have been using RocketRoute for about a month on a trial period, and it's been a fantastic bit of kit.

“I particularly appreciate the online tracking system which we are going to be using as part of our flight following. We will also be giving out links to clients and brokers so they can see where the aircraft is with one click”

Despite the benefits, Monk says the technology does have some glitches: “Some of the paperwork it produces isn't quite up to the standard we need it to be, but they seem to be quite happy to adjust any paperwork to the way that we want it.

“We have got mobile apps that we can use either on our phones or on the iPads, so we can easily see all the flight documents.”

The system will give the operator access to flight planning from anywhere in the world, as opposed to the previous system which was not integrated, and which was for Europe only. “When we do a flight plan now, it has the performance of the aircraft, so we can calculate fuel, complete load sheets and range predictions,” continues Monk. “At the moment we use Aircraft Performance Group to do all of our runway performance analysis. RocketRoute is reducing our time for setting up a flight.”