South Africa's Comair Flight Services (CFS) has completed renovations on its south side hangar at Lanseria International airport in Johannesburg and has welcomed seven additional charter aircraft to its fleet since May of this year. These additions include a Challenger 300, a King Air C90, a Beechcraft 1900D, three PC-12s and a Cessna Caravan. CEO Justin Reeves tells EBAN that, because of the geographical position of South Africa, he needs to have a diverse fleet to cater to a wide range of clientele: “Our market is considerably smaller than the US and Europe, where it is possible to focus solely on VLJ air taxis or large jets; in South Africa we need to be a one-stop-shop and offer a larger selection of products to a smaller market.”

The CFS fleet contains a variety of turboprops – a mixture of PC-12s, Caravans and King Airs – used mainly for leisure flying. These cater largely for the safari market and locations with unpaved runways, carrying clients going on luxury high-end holidays.

For the corporate sector the company offers a jet fleet that includes Mustang, Nextant, Learjet, Hawker and Challenger types.

“I would say about 95 per cent of our charter flights are operated in Africa, but sometimes we go further afield, including the surrounding islands,” adds Reeves. “We operate a fair amount of flights to the Indian Ocean islands including Madagascar, Mauritius, Comoros and Reunion. South Africa remains the most mature aviation market and industry on the African continent today. However we saw unprecedented growth in Angola and Nigeria before the oil price plummeted. Even though both of these countries have been hit pretty hard by the oil price crash, we have seen some recovery recently, indicating that South Africa may not remain the aviation hub of Africa for long and opportunities elsewhere on the continent need to be explored. Key to this is finding the right local partner to help navigate the complexities that often stem from foreign business ownership and the bureaucracy that seems to be a hallmark of African states.”

Another factor to consider in the African charter market is the routes offered by airlines. Historically, people going to Botswana or Zambia for example would fly with an international carrier to Johannesburg and then connect onto regional carriers or charter an aircraft to their final destination. That has changed recently with Gulf carriers such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad now offering flights directly from the UAE and Doha to many of these neighbouring countries.

Reeves explains: “Because of this change in airline routes, we have to reassess our business model and we might need to look at expanding our operations to the neighbouring countries in the future. With some of our fleet based in these countries, we will still be able to offer charter flights to more remote areas that the airlines can't access due to short or unpaved runways.

“However at this stage, we feel that South Africa will remain the preferred country to charter from due to a weak currency along with international standard maintenance and good safety records forming part of our country's rich aviation history. Until now, South African operators have been the most recognised in the region in terms of safety and many have voluntarily requested independent audits such as Wyvern, ARGUS and IS-BAO. For these reasons, frequent charter clients would rather pay a premium to ferry a South African aircraft to a neighbouring country if they are not satisfied with what they can get locally.

“Nevertheless, as other African countries' aviation industries develop, we see the safety levels and professionalism of air operators catch up, so we have to keep an open mind and be ready for future expansion.”

CFS occupied new facilities at Lanseria earlier this year and Reeves is very pleased that the renovation work has now been concluded. “In South Africa, no FBO has the benefit of customs and immigration on site and the only way to depart on international flights is through the airport terminal building. Our previous facilities could only be accessed by people who had airside security access and even our domestic movements had to dispatch via the airport's main terminal building.

“Due to this limitation and our growing customer base, we had a requirement for better domestic operations. With our new world-class facility, which includes two VIP lounges, meeting rooms and covered car parking, we can offer our clients a much better experience. Additionally, we now have two large hangars that have effectively doubled our aircraft parking space, allowing us to cater to even more clients. In our old facility we were running at 100 per cent capacity and, even though the space has now been doubled, we have nearly outgrown it again. Of course we are very pleased with this and what the new facility has done for the business overall.”

He is busy fine-tuning current projects, and CFS's strategy for the rest of 2017 is to not take on any new work but rather to harness the growth that it is experiencing. “One cannot afford to neglect an existing client base because of too much focus on new business. We have been successful at getting new clients on board, so now we need to bed that down. In 2018 we can focus on new projects, once we are satisfied that we have strengthened our infrastructure and processes to deal with the additional capacity that we now have.”