Membership airline Surf Air Europe has completed its first flight using a Phenom 300. The flight was a return from London Luton to Ibiza and departed from Signature Flight Support's Luton FBO.

“Everything is moving pretty fast now,” comments CEO Simon Talling-Smith. “We will be flying to the expected summertime destinations during July and August. We will use the Phenoms for longer range flights and the PC-12s, which will be introduced into Europe in September, for shorter trips .”

“A lot of members are signing up, and all of this comes off the back of significant expansion for Surf Air in the US, having just acquired our biggest competitor.”

He believes that the US and European markets have a lot in common. “Europe has a lot of cities in close proximity, where airports are congested and frequent business travellers are frustrated. In this way it is no different from the US. However, airports are more constrained in Europe and there are fewer secondary and tertiary airports than the US, so we have to manage our way around that.”