EURO JET EXTENDS ITS SUPPORT NETWORK TO THE EAST
New lounges opening later this year in Czech Republic (Karlovy Vary), Croatia (Dubrovnik) and Ukraine (Kiev Boryspil) are the latest evidence of the strong commitment of Euro Jet Intercontinental to providing flight and group support across Eastern Europe. The Prague-based company also has new handling supervision licenses in Serbia and Ukraine—both of which are hard to get—and recently expanded its presence in Central Asia with new offices in Turkey and Pakistan.
The focus of the Euro Jet presence at the EBACE show (Booth J065) is a photographic display of the company’s 250-strong team of employees. The eight-year-old company is emphasizing the fact that its staff now support operations at more than 200 airports in 30 countries.
“We are the only company with a geographic span of Eastern Europe and central Asia with our own team on the ground,” said Gareth Danker, Euro Jet’s director of global sales and marketing, who claimed that rival trip support companies do not have their own staff in these regions.
Over the past five years, Euro Jet has achieved over 300 percent growth in the mount of traffic it supports. In its first year in business, it supported a couple of thousand flights and this has now risen to over 7,000.
A prime example of the experience levels among the Euro Jet team is Peter Pazurek, its country manager for Hungary. He was the first manager of the general aviation terminal at Budapest Airport, which is now one of the busiest gateways in a region where business aviation has only really be active for the past 20 years or so. Most Euro Jet staff have worked supporting business aviation in their locations for several years.
The expansion of private aviation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia has been because of a growth in business in this region as economies have continuously expended since most countries became independent in 1989 and throughout the 1990s, Danker told AIN. “Some of the major industries include manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry, filming moves, tourism, especially in the Balkan countries of Croatia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, and rich minerals, especially in Central Asia.”
But, for the most part, the strong growth in the east of Europe and into Asia over the past two decades has yet to be matched by the development of suitable infrastructure for business aviation. “The biggest challenge in this part of the world is that in general there are no FBOs,” said Danker. “There are some exceptions like Prague [where Euro Jet is an FBO] or Riga [Latvia], where there are multiple FBOs. But for the most part, airports do not have the Western European or American style FBOs and passengers have to rely upon airport employees whose focus is not necessarily on customer service or even an expedited service. They also do not provide multiple services like transportation, catering, accommodation, and fueling. Nor do they give credit. Euro Jet recognizes this and we have worked to make ourselves a one-stop shop network that can solve all these problems with a single e-mail or phone call.”
