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The first Skytrans A319 has touched down in Australia as the regional airline looks to launch its wet-leasing business.
The aircraft, to be registered VH-L7A, formerly flew with Italian airline ITA and is now owned by Skytrans parent company Avia Solutions Group (ASG). It arrived in Brisbane at 7:40 on Monday morning, having flown from Lithuania via Ras Al Khaimah, Colombo, and Denpasar.
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The A319 was originally to arrive in October before being pushed back and has arrived by Christmas as Skytrans CEO Alan Milne predicted.
“It not only looks a million dollars, it had a flawless flight with just one minor defect on descent into Brisbane,” Milne told Australian Aviation.
“But other than that, all the other sectors were no defects. It was a great, great delivery flight.”
ASG and Skytrans are in talks with several interested airlines, said Milne, and expect the A319 to be up and running by the middle of next month, with a second and third aircraft to arrive early next year.
“Because we’ve got Christmas coming up, we’re doing the deregistration out of Lithuanian registration into Australian rego as we speak – I would assume or hope that’ll be done by the end of this week,” Milne said.
“We still have crew training to do on the actual aircraft, we still have an evacuation demonstration to be completed for CASA – and then, of course, we’re in the hands of CASA for the review of all our updated manuals and procedures. Get the registration done, the certificate of airworthiness.
“In all honesty, I think probably mid-January – early to be optimistic and mid to be pessimistic.”
ASG, which bought Skytrans earlier this year with an eye to using its valuable Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC) to start wet-leasing operations in Australia, has plans for up to 18 aircraft in the country, Milne said.
“The chairman of ASG is very clear that the wet lease or ACMI market is a ‘build it and they will come’ type model – people need to be able to see that the airplane’s here and ready to go,” Milne added.
“It’s always difficult to get people to commit when you’re saying, ‘yes, we’re going to do this, we will have it by this date’. It’s a big difference when you’ve actually got the aeroplane parked.
“Obviously we’ll use the aeroplane whenever we can, but we’d be looking for more long term type flying, which invariably needs more than one airframe.”
Avia Solutions Group currently operates a global fleet of 221 aircraft.
