For our Perspectives series, we talk to experienced business aviation industry professionals, who share with us their unique insights and offer a window into their world. This month's interviewee is David Hayman, MD of Channel Jets. He has been experiencing extraordinary demand for his fleet of five Eclipse jets, with bold ambitions to double or even triple the roster.

“I acquired an AOC a couple of years ago, based on the Eclipse on the 2-REG Channel Islands Guernsey AOC. For the last two years we have been quietly and slowly building the business, based exclusively on Eclipse aircraft, getting the network up and running to and from the Channel Islands. Today the fleet stands at five jets on the AOC, but we are looking to double that in the next three or four months. This comes as a direct result of what’s going on in the aviation market at the moment. We see huge demand for the types of services that the Eclipse offers. It’s an entry-level jet with relatively low cost compared to any other business jet – obviously more expensive than an airline ticket, but there are a lot of people who don’t want to travel on airliners any more. We are seeing quite a lot of passengers that are very old that are flying with us, and many passengers who have never flown on private jets before that are now flying with us. Based on that demand, I think we could possibly double or even triple our fleet over the next 12 months, providing services to and from the Channel Islands throughout Europe.

We are bullish about our business in this sector although everything is quite speculative, and we won’t really know until we start doing it. The model is based around a fractional programme, although initially we are buying the aircraft ourselves and then putting them out to fraction in 25% and 50% shares. Typically around about GBP250,000 will buy them a quarter of a jet. We operate them on their behalf and we share some of the revenue from the charter operations, which goes towards the fixed costs of insurance, maintenance, hangarage and so on. We crew the jets with full-time professional pilots and they get to fly at a very low rate as a fractional owner, compared to what it would be on the open market. And then of course we have the normal regular charter clients. Has this got a ceiling? Probably. How many aircraft that is – we are not too sure. We’ve always grown organically, we’ve never gone and done things without knowing that we had a market. And right now we know that we’ve certainly got a market for at least 10 aircraft. At the moment we are having to decline around 90 per cent of the requests for flights that we are getting, because at the moment, we have the jets, but we need more type rated crew and that in itself is a headache as the simulator is in the USA. We have some solutions for this which are currently in play.

The Eclipse is a totally functional jet. What people aren’t going to get with us is big, thick, plush carpets, loads of walnut and gold, and champagne. That’s not what the Eclipse is about. Equally, what they are not going to get is a massive bill to go from A to B, and yet the jet does do that at more or less the same speed as the vast majority of other jets, but at a fraction of the cost. We are offering a transportation tool; it is the most eco-efficient jet in the world, and not by a small margin but by a New York mile. This is something that companies will start to look at. A lot of companies say we can’t be seen to be putting executives on private jets because of the way it is perceived in the public domain. But our jets are much more functional transportation tools – they are eco-friendly burning less fuel than any other jet in the world , a similar amount of fuel to a Range Rover per nautical mile – albeit at more than 400 mph – so with its speed and economy, we can take two people on a two-hour range, at probably half the cost of the next nearest competitor.

The Eclipse is ideal for Europe, with a max range of 1,000 nm, although we target shorter sectors of under 500 nm, meaning most of our journeys last round about an hour, maybe a bit less. Short and sweet. We advertise for two passengers, so if you have got a big family, it’s not the right jet, but 95 per cent of our journeys have two passengers or fewer. We are building up a loyal client base. I think at the moment there is a massive void to be filled, and I’m not saying we are going to fill it but we are going to be one of the operators that at least fill a part of it. Some people at the moment are quite genuinely terrified of flying on commercial airlines – they think they are going to die by catching the virus – and it’s driving them into the private jet sector. So many of the people we have been flying this year have never flown on a private jet before, so they find themselves onboard with us, whereas last year if there was a Ryanair or easyJet option, they probably would have gone and taken that. People are finding the extra money to fly with people like us.

Often, the elderly clients that are flying with us didn’t charter us, it was their children. We get a call saying ‘I need you to bring my dad from Norfolk to Jersey we want him to be with the family’ or perhaps they want to bring granny from Birmingham to Guernsey, so we go and pick up quite elderly people on behalf of their children, and it’s the children who are picking up the bill, because they are worried about their parents. We have another set of clients that are businesspeople who can’t be bothered with the abject misery of what has now become commercial air transportation through the major airports, with mask wearing, social distancing measures and all the security queues. The whole thing is so regimented, slow and cumbersome, people don’t want to do it. People are willing to pay more to go point to point and over and done with as quickly as possible. I expect the market to expand in the coming months, I don’t see the government’s policies in relation to COVID going anywhere too quickly. In the absence of a vaccine, I think this is going to be here for at least two years. People’s attitudes have changed and the market now is bigger. We appeal to the affordable part of the market. Maybe you can’t afford to go on a Challenger or a Falcon but there is a good chance you can afford to go in an Eclipse. I think we’ve got some golden years ahead of us, in our part of the business.”