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Air bp
Air bp
The monthly news publication for aviation professionals.
The monthly news publication for aviation professionals.

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Turnbull to pull the Cello strings as commercial manager
Birmingham, UK-based Cello Aviation has appointed former Vertis Aviation COO Neil Turnbull as commercial manager. Turnbull, who spent three years at Vertis, hopes to raise the profile of Cello and introduce it to new markets.
Read this story in our December 2016 printed issue.

Birmingham, UK-based Cello Aviation has appointed former Vertis Aviation COO Neil Turnbull as commercial manager. Turnbull, who spent three years at Vertis, hopes to raise the profile of Cello and introduce it to new markets. He says: “Cello is quite strong in the football team and music tour markets, with both the Boeing and the RJ85. It also carries out a lot of promotional charter work including film and car launches. But there are other markets to break into. The company has been a little bit under the radar for the last few years, and I think it feels it is time to move on and push it out there.

“Vertis and Cello are very different companies. Vertis specialises in ultra long range aircraft such as the G550 and G650, and also the ACJ and BBJ market, and those are obviously smaller capacity aircraft, even though they are large. The BBJs and ACJs are restricted to 19 passengers normally, whereas with Cello you are looking at aircraft that will seat a minimum of 50 people. So it is a different style of work, less short notice and less ad hoc.”

European CEOs and Middle East clients make up a large percentage of Vertis' customer base, while Cello's market is very broker-led, and involves more long range planned work and programmes that are intricately organised. Turnbull believes that his good contact base, along with music and film promo experience, will stand him in good stead. “Cello will now have the capacity to have someone out and about, talking to the brokers, somebody who is on the road who can sit and plan with brokers rather than just the office-based team.”

Owned by Birmingham's Gill Group, Cello operates out of Birmingham airport where it has its own maintenance hangar. Although the amount of Birmingham charter is lower than that of London, the operator supplements this with a lot of European work.

Turnbull says that plans will begin to unfold in 2017: “There are possible upcoming changes to the fleet, and new staff members are joining. There have been quite a lot of new staff coming to Cello over the past few months, mainly to fill postholder roles.

“I think 2017 will be quite an interesting year for Cello. We are optimistic, and the flying plan for 2017 already looks busy. It is a case of increasing that and getting as much into the schedule as we can.”