Aces High: Iron Maiden celebrity’s shuttle jet service to fly islanders by Autumn

Tuesday 15 August 2017

An aviation company backed by Iron Maiden’s lead singer aims to get Channel Islanders ‘Aces High’ with a new air taxi service later this year.

Chaired by pilot-by-day-rocker-by-night Bruce Dickinson, Aeris Aviation is set to launch Channel Jets – a shuttle service from Jersey and Guernsey to nearside Europe – by October.

It's not the first time Iron Maiden has been linked with the Channel Islands - they composed album 'Piece of Mind' while staying at Le Chalet hotel in Jersey and rehearsing in its restaurant.

Mr Dickinson's “no frills” high-speed charter service aims to transport the Channel Islands’ business community in a way that bypasses stopovers and London connections, taking them to key business zones and back in time for lunch.

“We’re targeting ones and twos – people that need to go for very important meetings in the financial centres… To go and sign a contract in Luxembourg, for example, sometimes that means taking a lawyer two days out of the office to go and sign a document,” David Hayman, CEO of Aeris Aviation, told Express.

“It’s not going to have the frills of all the refinery and stuff that you would get on a private jet. Our jets are basic – [passengers] can’t stand up in them, they’re not in a separate cabin, they’re in with the actual pilots, you can see what’s going on in the flight deck – but they’re exceptionally fast,” he added.

The secret will be the airline’s two light Eclipse EA500 jets, of which Aeris Aviation is the European distributor.

They’ll make their ‘Empire of the Clouds’ at 43,000ft, speeding at 430mph to destinations ranging from the business hotspots of Geneva, Isle of Man and Amsterdam to holiday locations like Malaga, Alicante and the South of France.

Each will carry one to four passengers – a deliberate choice as the majority of European charter flights have under four travellers on board – and will be priced around £1,500 per hour, which Mr Hayman said was at the cheaper end of charter flights.

“It’s the world’s most economic business jet by a New York mile – it’s so low cost compared to all other jets because it’s small,” Mr Hayman commented.

“We are an on-demand product, the experience people have will be one of efficiency not luxury. They rock up, they don’t have to go through security in the same way as you do in the terminal buildings and so on, so in Jersey we’ll be going through Gama, and in Guernsey, ASG. It’s a functional business tool, as opposed to being a luxury kind of item. That’s why I think it’s going to have some appeal to the business community in the Channel Islands.”

Guernsey-based Channel Jets is the latest enterprise to throw its hat into the chartered aviation ring. Jersey-based Isle Fly, which uses an eight-seat Cessna aircraft, launched in May, while Waves promise an Uber-style experience with seats booked via an app on their 10-14-passenger planes.

Mr Hayman said that Channel Jets were focused on different market, however. The jets will initially be chartered over the telephone, but an app service might follow later.