Belo Horizonte-based charter, aircraft sales and maintenance company Lider Aviacao is to launch an app for aircraft maintenance and aircraft parts sales that allows customers to schedule maintenance or to buy aircraft parts quickly and easily using their mobile.

The demand for maintenance services has increased in the last two years due to the pandemic; since aircraft were not flying owners took advantage of the downtime. The forecast for Líder’s 2022 aircraft maintenance services business is a continued increase in demand compared to 2019, mainly for Gulfstreams as Líder is a Gulfstream authorised service centre in Brazil. The company expects that planned maintenance will increase 23.5 per cent this year over 2019, while unscheduled maintenance will increase by 12 per cent.

Líder is a one-stop shop, offering solutions across aircraft charter, airport services, aircraft sales and acquisitions, maintenance services, and air operations for the oil and gas production chain. The company says that executive aviation is a thermometer for measuring economic activities, and its recovery means an increased demand in all of its business units. Aligned with this growth, the number of employees has risen by 18 per cent since the beginning of 2022, and the expectation is for it to increase by 27 per cent by the end of this year.

“Based on aircraft charter data, we have seen that there have been new entrants to the executive aviation market,” says chief operating officer, maintenance, charter and aircraft management Bruna Assumpção. “In other words, people who have never used it are increasingly willing to invest in the benefits of executive aviation, whether by purchasing an aircraft or air taxi trips. Our air taxi service grew in 2021, continues to grow through 2022, and we have great expectations for 2023.”  

Worldwide, there has been an increase in sales transactions of both new and pre-owned aircraft compared to the pre-pandemic period.

“Lider Aviacao realised this same trend in the Brazilian market and has worked to meet demand in this country as well, especially for those customers who can’t wait for a new aircraft,” explains aircraft sales and acquisitions director Anderson Markiewicz. “Brazil has seen a 150 per cent increase in new and pre-owned sales over the pre-pandemic period.”

Another highlight has been the oil and gas market. Líder has carried out offshore and onshore air operations in Brazil for nearly 50 years. This expertise, combined with an increasingly efficient and technological operation, has allowed it to further expand in this segment despite such challenges to the management of operating costs as rising fuel prices and dollar values.

“We’ve invested in eight more helicopters, including two AW139, that diversify our fleet even more,” says chief operating officer Junia Hermont. By the end of this year, the company will have an additional operational base in Rio de Janeiro state.

Líder has always kept an eye on new technologies and market trends. Over its 63 year history it has deployed a flight data monitoring system, performed satellite monitoring of aircraft positions using the health and use monitoring system and it has introduced the electronic flight bag. In 2021 it became the first operator governed by RBAC 135 and 121 to be authorised by the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) to use a digital logbook, developed by its IT team, to ensure greater security, cost reduction and ease of data input.

In order to make operations even more sustainable and to align with UN Sustainable Development Goals, Lider Aviacao uses a greenhouse gases emissions inventory, a management tool that enables emissions to be quantified and ongoing actions to be identified.