HUNTING HAS announced the sale of its business-aviation unit, which runs fixed-base operations (FBOs) at London's Heathrow, Stansted and Luton airports, to the owners of the London department store Harrods.
The operation, a joint venture with BP Oil, has been acquired for nearly £1 million by Harrods Holdings. Plans for the disposal were first revealed in Flight International, 18-14 October.
Hunting says that it has also sold the executive-jet centre at Heathrow for £7.3 million in a related deal with Harrods. Its corporate-aircraft completions operations will continue alongside Hunting's growing airline- interiors business at Biggin Hill, however. Brokering and management services are also not included in the sale.
The FBO business had been losing around £1 million a year in a market suffering from excess capacity. Harrods' owner Mohamed Al Fayed has a long association with aviation, being an operator of a Gulfstream business jet and was, at one time, its agent in the Gulf.
Source: Flight International
