Air Charter Service Crucial to 2018 World Cup Logistics

Aircraft charter expected to be crucial to World Cup logistics next year

Leading aircraft charter specialist, Air Charter Service, says that aircraft charters will be an essential part of logistics for the FIFA World Cup in Russia next year.

Group Director of ACS’s Commercial Jets division, Matthew Purton, commented: “The 2018 championship in Russia throws up a variety of problems with regards to getting people around. Russia is a huge country and the distance between some of the stadiums is more than 1,700 miles, which is a long coach ride! With only Russian registered airlines being able to perform domestic flights in the country, this drastically limits the choice of aircraft able to transport the teams and fans from hotels and training camps to matches. At some of the slightly smaller airports involved next year, Russian speakers will be needed as the locals will not speak enough English to help with the specific requirements needed for such detailed flight programmes.

“Fortunately we had an excellent ‘practice run’ with the Confederations Cup in June and July of this year, for which ACS flew five of the eight teams involved and made a lot of good contacts. I believe that we are in a great position to offer clients the best solutions for next year – we have two offices in Russia, one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. A quarter of the 40 matches in the tournament will be played in those two cities. The fact that we have a Russian bank account will mean easier transactions than those companies using Dollars, Euros or Sterling and we will be looking to position some of our experts on site at the airports to make sure everything runs smoothly.

“It is typically this period the year before a World Cup that we start to get serious interest in aircraft charters for the following June. With only two qualifying games left, football associations, supporter groups, sponsors, media and the teams themselves now have a good idea of whether they will be taking part in the tournament and will be starting to look into various options ahead of the draw in December.

“Following the initial interest that we had a couple of weeks ago, bookings will really start to take off when the Group Stage draw is held on Friday December 1st. We expect to be working all over that weekend with requests and booking aircraft.”

www.aircharterservice.com

ENDS

About Air Charter Service

We are a global company with 20 worldwide offices, spanning all six major continents and we offer private jet, commercial airliner and cargo aircraft charters, as well as onboard courier solutions. We arrange more than 12,500 contracts annually and our revenue is close to half a billion dollars. We were formed in 1990 by Chairman Chris Leach and CEO Justin Bowman in a basement, and we now employ more than 400 staff worldwide.

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