Jet Aviation has been providing services to customers in Singapore for 20 years. Could you describe your international operations as well as your vision for Singapore?

Jet Aviation is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and is part of a Fortune 500 company called General Dynamics (GD). Jet Aviation represents one arm of the aerospace investments division within GD. As a leading business aviation services company, our service offerings include maintenance, completions and refurbishment, engineering, FBO and fuel services, along with aircraft management, charter, and staffing. We have an integrated “hub and spoke” business service model, operating four major MRO hubs located in St. Louis, Basel, Dubai, and Singapore, which are supported by other global maintenance facilities to meet regional demand. Our two Completions Centers are based in Basel and St. Louis, while we operate 20 FBOs around the world and manage a global fleet of approximately 300 aircraft.

Our MRO & FBO facility at Singapore Seletar Airport was launched at the Singapore Airshow in February 1996. The business aviation market is certainly growing in Asia-Pacific, and we have faced accelerated growth ever since China started buying large jets in 2010. In 2014, Jet Aviation built a new facility adjacent to our old hangar in Singapore, and we are currently building a new hangar there, which will be completed in Q3 of 2017. Overall, we will grow to occupy a space of about 15,000 sq m, firmly establishing Singapore as a major hub for Asia-Pacific.

Could you describe your service offering for the aviation market in Singapore?

Jet Aviation is a multi-faceted business aviation services company. We want our customers who own a private jet to have the possibility of having it serviced anywhere. From a services perspective, we are divided into aircraft completions (for large aircraft), maintenance and refurbishment services, FBO (ground handling), aircraft management (owning, crewing, flight planning, provisioning), and we also operate alongside Jet Professionals, which is a staffing company that provides all the personnel needed to provide high-standard services to our clients.

How does Singapore’s aerospace industry compare to Hong Kong’s?

In terms of business aviation, the rules and regulations are basically the same in both Singapore and Hong Kong. As far as running a business in those locations, Hong Kong airport has become congested. When the planning of that airport was done, they catered for what they believed would be the largest private-jet market possible, about 30 aircraft, whereas there are well over 100 aircraft parked there. The infrastructure to support business aviation there is complex and now restricted given that operators are all competing for limited space and landing permits along with the growth in demand in commercial airline activity. Hence our strategy to expand into Macau, which will provide us with a great deal more flexibility and opportunity for growth of our operations in the future.

In Singapore, the Economic Development Board is playing a very influential role in terms of land allocation and usage. They are very proactive in promoting Seletar Aerospace Park and have a strong vision to create business aviation services that are unrivalled in the region. Doing business here, in terms of access to airport facilities and services companies, is easy.