Czech Nextant operator Time Air is, albeit temporarily, putting the brakes on its fleet expansion following a long period of steady growth. The company debuted in 2012 and over the last few years has added an aircraft nearly every year, particularly between 2015 to 2017.

Managing director Martin Prazsky explains that the company now requires a period of stabilisation so as to accommodate this growth. "Our flight time has been growing by 25 per cent each year," he says. "It takes some effort to go from a small scale operation to where we are now, which is 3,500 hours per year."

A lot of effort has gone in to getting everything to where it should be he continues, and the company feels that the summer of 2018 is when the balance of high standards and size of operation was more or less right, or at least close to where it wanted to be. "We flew around 400 hours in August, and we want to keep going in this direction," Prazsky explains.

Time Air is now looking to establish more routine within its operations. "When brokers book with us they tend to be very happy with how we perform, right down to the aircraft, services and communication." And since the interior of each of its aircraft is very similar the company can depend upon any aircraft in its fleet to do the required job for the customer.

He adds that any new Nextant would have to conform in terms of design: "Because that is what makes the brokers and customers happy. Our design is unique and differs quite a bit from other Nextants. This has given us good results and we don’t want to go sideways, we want to continue to progress upwards. Adding more Nextants that conform to our branding can only be a good thing." He would not rule out the addition of a larger aircraft at some stage, and this would be permitted on Time Air's AOC. "We fly to north Africa, the Middle East and so on already so we have the experience to extend to longer range operations," he concludes.