Air Charter Service records 39% revenue increase in 2017

February 23, 2018: Air Charter Service, one of the leading aircraft charter specialists, has announced that the company’s revenue was $677 million (£477 million) in the financial year ending January 31, 2018. This is a 39 percent increase in comparison to the previous year.

As per a release from the company, across all divisions, the company arranged almost 15,000 contracts in 2017, up from 12,500 the year before. The total number of passenger charters was up more than 20 percent to 8,618 over the year. And cargo flights increased by 11 percent, to 4,300 contracts arranged across 2017. The company revamped its onboard courier division two years ago and that also enjoyed a good year, increasing job numbers by 52 percent to 1,670.

Group CEO Justin Bowman said, “Our cargo figure of £213 million ($300 million) was somewhat boosted by charters related to the hurricanes in the Caribbean and the southern States of America, along with other one-off contracts, but underlying growth is still impressive. Another pleasing aspect was the fact that the growth was spread across the world with 14 out of our 20 worldwide offices experiencing at least double-digit growth, with our European, American and Far Eastern offices proving to be the star performers.”

Andy Christie, group director of Private Jet Charters at ACS added, “8,618 is a huge amount of passenger charters – the figure means that, on average, we arranged a passenger flight every hour of every day in 2017. Many of the contracts that we fly are round trips or multi-sector, meaning that in terms of actual flights, the number is well over 15,000. 20 percent growth is even more impressive when compared with WingX figures for 2017, which show that private jet flights increased by just under 3 percent in Europe and less than 5 percent in the US. We are very proud of our numbers, especially with several start-ups aiming to buy a share in the industry through millions of pounds of their investment being spent on marketing.” 

ACS’s long-term investment in technology has also started to pay dividends, with customer-facing projects proving key in much of this growth. Along with this impressive increase in sales, the development of ACS’s back office technology has helped drive an incredible 100 percent increase in the company’s EBITDA from £7 million ($9.8 million) to £14 million ($19.6 million), despite only a 39 percent increase in revenue.

Bowman concluded: “All of this means that ACS is now the largest charter brokerage in the world and we hope that the buoyant market for aircraft charters will continue into this year. It is an exciting time at ACS right now – two weeks ago we opened our 21st office, in Manhattan, and we have plans for several more in the next 12 months.”