Madrid’s Sky Service Aviation has acquired a new Citation Excel. The principal of the company recently bought the aircraft. Jose Espinosa from the company told EBAN more about the latest addition.

“The principal wanted an aircraft with European range and this one had the benefit of having a very spacious cabin as well. You are able to stand up in it with ease,” he said. “The luggage compartment is also very large. We did think of taking on a Lear 60 because we thought it was a better aircraft aeronautically – but it didn’t have the luggage compartment that the principle wanted. The Citation Excel was the right combination of price, space, capacity and range,” Espinosa said.

He predicts that the new aircraft will be popular with customers. “The Citation Excel that we have is the only unit in Spain at the moment, so as it is new it’s hard to say exactly how popular it will be, especially since the principal is flying a lot and we haven’t yet done any charter operations with it,” Espinosa added. “But from my own experience, I can say that the Excel will be a good aircraft for charter and this means that it will be well received by our customers.”

The company manages and charters aircraft. Soon it hopes to be carrying out charter operations in the Excel as well. “We expect to fly about 200 hours per year for the principal and 100-150 hours for charter operations. We will see,” he said. “We’ve only had this particular aircraft since July 5.”

It also operates a Lear 35, a Lear 55, two Falcons – one 900B and one 900EX – three Citation 525s and two EC120s. But Espinosa explained how the company hopes to expand at a later stage. “We are interested in managing more aircraft, which could be based here and chartered out.”

Sky Service was formed 12 years ago, as a company to manage aircraft that belong to shareholders. However, it hopes to keep growing and eventually offer better services to its customers, as Espinosa explained: “I joined the company a year ago, after working as the general manager at Gestair. It was at this time that we decided to launch the company as a real professional competitor in the open market,” he said. “Our plan is to increase the fleet, to get more aircraft for management and to improve our mainten-

ance sector. At the last EBACE we were appointed as Bombardier representatives in Spain, so we plan to sell aircraft from here too.”

Competition is scarce, but strong in the Spanish capital. “Gestair is fundamentally our only competitor, but it is really tough competition,” said Espinosa. “They really wanted to be the only ones operating from here and they must have been upset when this company was launched.

“We intend to keeping growing, becoming bigger and better than ever before,” he concluded.