Vladislav Zenov wants steady growth for his marketplace

Charterscanner moves into Dubai

Charterscanner is to expand after completing its first year of trading. Currently there are 120 operators worldwide using its database, and it has access to more than 550 jets in Europe alone. Vladislav Zenov, co-founder and ceo, says that so far he has been concentrating on business close to home: “Most of our clients are Russian so we have our main operator centre and representative office in Moscow, along with a representative office in Vienna. This is in the middle of Europe, and we chose it because we also have a lot of European customers.” Now Charterscanner has set its sights on the Middle East and America, and with that in mind it has set up a main office in Dubai.

Zenov continues: “Eventually we want to be global, so the idea is to create a worldwide system, but we have to focus on each market very carefully, and only after the market works very well do we move on to the next one, step by step. The most interesting thing for the customer is that it must work efficiently; you must have the best operators. So we check every operator before they join the system, and we allow only commercial operators with an AOC to join. Fixed wing charter is the current focus, but we have the potential to add rotary later.” The Charterscanner marketplace is free for the customer, with no membership fee. Customers undergo a verification process and, once accepted, they have 24/7 access to Charterscanner so they can examine operator price competitiveness, fleet size or seat positions and always use the Charterscanner support hotline if needed. This allows for any potential problems to be resolved during the booking process.

Zenov concludes: “Customers know from the outset just who the operator is, and nothing is hidden from them.” Charterscanner also facilitates communication between customer and operator post booking. The operator has a free unlimited trial period of around three months. After that a fixed fee per aircraft, per month is levied, which is not related to the number of booked flights. In 2014 the company sold over $4.5m of charter flights and says it is seeing a good deal of repeat business.