Ashish Wastrad takes over as managing director of ACS India

ACS charter volumes rise over 2016

Air Charter Service arranged a record number of contracts last year, making 2016 the company's best year ever. Group CEO Justin Bowman says: “In total we completed 12,462 contracts, an average of more than 34 every single day, and an 11 per cent increase on 2015.”

Often one contract entails many different flight sectors. He continues: “We have done some interesting charters in the last 12 months; one that springs to mind is the Iron Maiden tour. It was 48 separate flights over the course of four months on a fully customised Boeing 747 nicknamed 'Ed Force One'. Another was an on-board courier job, to return some shoes that had been left in a New York hotel to their owner, who lives in Indonesia.

“Our growth in the past five years has been remarkable. We arranged 6,500 charter contracts in 2011 and now we're doing almost double that. It is a true testament to our global team's continuous hard work over the past 12 months and over previous years. We are yet to receive audited figures as our year end was 31 January, but this is due to be another record year in terms of revenue too.”

Changes to ACS India team

Ashish Wastrad has been promoted to managing director of the company's India office, following the move by previous MD Tracy D'Cruz to regional director, Europe. Bowman comments: “We are very excited to see this next phase in ACS India's growth, which has performed fantastically under Tracy's careful stewardship over the past five years. Ashish started his ACS career four and a half years ago and has built up the Mumbai operation's private jet division in this time.”