Diamond Executive Aviation is adding an 11th DA42 to its fleet, which will be based at Rome Urbe airport for air taxi ops. Ceo Peter Bondar says that it is the right time to expand: “We are generally expanding our operations because criticality of mass is important for economic success. The reality is that many aircraft are sponsored by a key owner, and then any commercial operation is the icing on the cake.

“In our world, all our activities have to be self-financing, and what we have learnt by our own exper-iences is that having a mixed fleet of aircraft doesn't work economically for a variety of reasons.

“Our focus is to increase the scale of our operations to improve net efficiency, and therefore improve profitability.

The operator is not phasing out older aircraft, but does believe that newer aircraft are more attractive to traditional air taxi customers. “A very significant part of our activity comes from what we call special operations,” continues Bondar. “In that sense, older aircraft can find good homes, because these users are not particularly bothered about the age of the aircraft; in special ops the average aircraft age is about 40 years. The fact that our average age is five doesn't count for a lot.”

Two of its aircraft, based in Italy, are primarily designed for air taxi work with high net worth individuals.

Diamond Executive has entered discussions with partners who are looking to deploy DA42-based solutions in place of military assets. “We have taken the work from some of the older King Airs and piston twins such as Piper Chieftains and Navajos,” Bondar adds.

He concludes by saying that his charter plans are modest: “We will be carrying on but we are not looking to substantially expand this aspect of the business, because with a short haul aircraft you have to have a large number of regional bases to make it work. Having tried it in the UK and in Italy, we don't see the economic justification for doing it in other countries, especially when we can see more lucrative opportunities than air taxi.”