Home to more than 5.5 million people, Scotland is a uniquely proud nation with a long standing aviation tradition. Air Charter Scotland began operations in Glasgow 20 years ago with a Cessna fleet, manufactured by Textron, an American aviation aircraft manufacturing corporation. Alongside Textron, we have been able to thrive, and have overcome challenges allowing us to go from strength to strength.
Air Charter Scotland started with a small fleet of Cessna piston-twins, and later leased a privately owned CitationJet 1. Under new ownership in 2006, we continued to grow, and over two decades later, we have flown 20 Cessnas, a record that Textron Aviation believes is unique.
Our commercial Director/Grounds Operations Manager, Derek Thomson, has experience with several business aircraft types and says one of the reasons for Cessna’s success in the Air Charter Scotland fleet has been Textron Aviation’s continuous improvement in customer support, including its willingness to recognise our charter operator’s challenges and work together as a team.
Speaking on the citations Derek said ‘I believe Citation dispatch reliability is an important factor, and the aircraft are very efficient, and then there’s the cost of acquisition, we encourage people to buy something more modest as they explore private jet ownership and the Citation is the perfect option for that’.
Both Brexit and Covid have had a significant impact on the aviation industry, with Thomson saying that ‘The ravages of Covid hid the worst machinations of Brexit, it’s created around three times more work to plan a trip’. However, our flights operations team continues to excel, ‘we saw borders changing by the hour and there was always concern we’d have a crew stranded, but we made certain everything was 100% perfect and managed to come through it’.
Our formative relationship with Textron Aviation is a testament to our ethos, and has allowed us to deliver unique capabilities as efficiently and safely as possible over the last 20 years. If you would like to create your bespoke private jet charter trip, get in touch with our team. You can call us today for a personalised consultation with one of our private aviation experts at +44 (0) 203 598 5392 or email us on info@aircharterscotland.com.