Ingrid Strahammer is vice-president of marketing (Europe) for Wilson airport, Nairobi-based Phoenix Aviation, one of a handful of African operators exhibiting at EBACE this year. Privately owned and family-run Phoenix was set up in 1994 by Strahammer's father, Irish-born pilot William Parkinson. It specialises in providing domestic and international charter flights on behalf of oil companies as well as worldwide medical evacuation flights. The company is attending the show for the second time, in partnership with online broker Avinode
Have you stepped up your presence at EBACE?
This is the first time two of my operations staff - our flight operations and cabin services managers - are with me. It will give us a bit of exposure here and let them see what EBACE is all about. Avinode has a huge stand and a lot of co-exhibitors, and we are one of the co-exhibitors. [Last year] we made some great contacts. It's a fantastic thing to be a part of. When I was an attendee it was good to meet people and expose Phoenix, but being an exhibitor makes you part of the team. It was great to meet the right people and contacts, as all the chief executives and the people who really do business come here.
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© Phoenix AviationStrahammer: realised EBACE's potential when she attended as a visitor |
How did your relationship with Avinode come about?
We signed up with Avinode three years ago when I visited EBACE as an attendee and had a look at the whole scene. We decided it would be a very good place to expose Phoenix as Phoenix has never done any marketing. Until a couple of years ago we didn't even have a website. We had business pouring in from different sides but without advertising or marketing. But our fleet has increased rapidly and we decided it might be a good idea to do a little bit of marketing and get our feelers out as to where there might be other business. We have 15 aircraft and I've put each type with Avinode and it's given us great exposure. We get a lot of quotation requests and quite a few follow-throughs. They're a young dynamic team and they've got a great vision and now that they've merged with CharterX it's helping to cover the US market as well.
What presence does Phoenix have in the European market?
Africa is the only region we really offer people, but we do fly into Europe regularly with medical evacuations. There is a lot of business in Africa but people are a bit wary of aviation over who is a safe company and has a good reputation, and Avinode has opened a lot of corridors for us, because we have a lot of safety audits. Because we work in partnership with the flying doctor service (AMREF) with our medical evacuations and we have a Eurami accreditation it puts AMREF on the map and us. We have a lot of oil companies and businesses who come in and do their own audits. We are the only company in Africa with an ISO accreditation, for which we are audited yearly. It keeps our safety standards high. We are probably the most audited African company.
How has the market in Africa fared during the downturn?
We didn't really feel the recession as we have business coming from so many different areas. As the only operator of jets in East Africa we get business from a lot of people and they will continue using us. In the long run they save [time by using business aircraft] when they're doing their meetings in Uganda and Entebbe and we do lots of flights into Rwanda. We do flights basically everywhere in Africa. Because there aren't that many safe aviation companies to use we did not feel the recession, so we were lucky. We added three aircraft to our fleet last year and there is the possibility of one more aircraft this year.
What are the biggest challenges to operating business jets in Africa?
It very definitely varies depending on where you're flying to. Because we've been in the business since 1994 we have great contacts and we get clearances very quickly. For anybody else that comes into Africa it's quite a headache. You have to get overflight clearances, you have to get your landing clearances. The African mentality means that they can make it difficult - they'll put charges up or change regulations and we are always on top of that because we're working with them daily and we know what they're up to. Obviously with our medical evacuations we have blanket clearances so with those we're completely covered and there is nothing that is going to stop us going in and out of anywhere in Africa.
How has Phoenix developed its aircraft fleet?
The first [Cessna] Excel arrived last November. We've got four Citation Bravos, four Beechcraft King Air 200s, one King Air 350, which we also brought in last year, three Cessna Caravans and a Eurocopter AS350B3 helicopter. The newest addition is a [Boeing] MD-83, based at [Jomo Kenyatta] international airport, because it can't land at Wilson due to the short runway. The MD-83 is great for what we need it for. We do a lot of UN work with it, and we've just sent it down to South Africa for refurbishment, and we're going to fit it out with stretchers because there are a lot of problems in Somalia. Our fleet is pretty busy flying in and out of there. We can help out in a bigger way when we can carry more stretchers.
Are there plans to further expand the fleet?
We were last year looking into a Sovereign which would be the next step up for the jets, but we decided that it might push the company financially. So we've decided to stay with the Excel. We might get a second Excel, and maybe another Beechcraft 350, and maybe we'll update our present fleet. The King Airs are old ladies now, but we're thinking of sticking with the fleet we've got and upgrading a few aircraft. We got our first new aircraft - a Cessna Caravan - last year, but we do basically deal with the secondhand market.
Has EBACE whetted your appetite to attend other shows?
We don't exhibit anywhere else. We were thinking of going to Dubai, but decided against it. EBACE has the biggest potential market. Basically, there is not masses of business in Europe. Our business is really on our front door, and within Africa we've got a lot of natural-resource companies and our aim is to let them know that we are around and that we have jets.
Source: Flight Daily News
