VIDEO: Air Charter Service celebrates 25 years in business

Air Charter Service (ACS) has commissioned a special film (see below) charting its history to celebrate 25 years since chairman Chris Leach and his wife Tina founded the company in the basement of their London home.
Leach, who previously worked for Saturn Airways, Transamerica Airlines and freight forwarder Savino Del Bene, said he began the company in 1990 when he spotted a gap in the market and to help pay the bills.
Leach says:  “I actually started the business to pay the mortgage, rather than looking to start a global company.
“Times were tough at first, so we rented a room in our house to a local student. Coincidentally, he was an aviation enthusiast and spent hours at a time memorising the registration of every aircraft in the world."
That student was Justin Bowman, now group chief executive of ACS.
He says that he aims to retain the family feel of the company despite its growth, although the company still has global ambitions.
“The current size of our operation is remarkable and something Tina and I are very proud of,” he says.
“Over the course of the past two and a half decades our aims have naturally shifted somewhat and our ultimate aim now is to become the largest charter brokerage house in the world across all three sectors in the next five to ten years.”
Earlier this year the company announced it would invest £10m in new charter technology over the next five years, including the roll out of its recent roll-out of new websites.
“Last year we arranged just over 9,000 charter contracts across our 18 offices, so this year we hope to complete more than 10,000. We opened our Geneva operation in May and will be opening two new offices in the next six months, which will further increase our market share,” says Leach.
In the video, Bowman says one of the challenges the company faced when it first launched was the favourable rates that larger competitors were offered by airlines.
ACS had to fight “tooth and nail” for every deal, he said. Leach added that the company made the point of going the extra mile with every customer.
Leach was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in aviation at Air Cargo News’ Cargo Airline of the Year Awards in 2013.