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PROFILE| AIR CHARTER SERVICE<br />
The company has recently announced spectacular<br />
half year results for 2015, with a 41%<br />
increase in business for the six months ending<br />
31st July. Commenting on the results Leach said:<br />
“The overall increase in revenue, charters and<br />
profi t is extremely pleasing. The strong fi gures<br />
have been evenly spread around the world. The<br />
only region in which we did not see growth was<br />
Russia,” he noted.<br />
The strong growth in the cargo charter market<br />
was particularly pleasing, after two years of<br />
virtual stagnation. “Our cargo department has<br />
had a booming start to the year, recording a<br />
60% increase,” Leach said. The private jet division<br />
enjoyed a fruitful fi rst six months, showing<br />
24% year on year growth.<br />
“ACS remains debt free with a strong balance<br />
sheet and bank funds of £11.7 million worldwide<br />
at the end of our half year, up from £8.8 million<br />
last year, a 33% increase. These fi gures do not in-<br />
clude deposits from our Lindbergh Card customers,<br />
as we hold these in separate bank accounts<br />
on behalf of our clients which are not mixed with<br />
our own trading funds,” he added.<br />
James Leach, group marketing director at<br />
ACS points out that the old saying about every<br />
cloud having a silver lining certainly proved to<br />
be the case as far as this year’s US West Coast<br />
port strikes were concerned. With the ports<br />
blocked there was a tremendous drive by companies<br />
to use air charter to move goods that<br />
would normally have gone across by ship in either<br />
direction.<br />
“We did extremely well out of that. It put me<br />
in mind of the Icelandic ash cloud which caused<br />
havoc to commercial airline services but created<br />
a huge demand for charter on the part of executives<br />
and wealthier passengers left stranded at<br />
a number of destinations. We moved aircraft and<br />
pilots to the edge of the cloud and people raced<br />
There are already clear signs that OBC is boosting our results.<br />
It is too early to put exact numbers to this. We will have a<br />
better idea once the service has been running for two years,<br />
but so far it has smashed all the targets we set<br />
James Leach<br />
56 International | Autumn 2015
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