News Release

From left: Tertius van Jaarsveld, CEO FlyAwesome: Martin Banner, CEO NAC; Dieter Ebeling, CEO Awesome Aviation; Jannie de Klerk, General Manager FlyAwesome Operations; Mike Mayers, General Manager FlyAwesome Maintenance.

National Airways Corporation teams with Awesome Aviation Group

National Airways Corporation and Awesome Aviation Group have been firmly entrenched in joint business ventures for well over a decade and the relationship between these two successful companies has been extremely beneficial to their stakeholders. As a result of this successful collaboration, NAC and Awesome Aviation Group have reached agreement to merge their flight operations and aircraft leasing businesses globally.

To this end, NAC has acquired a 50% equity stake in Awesome Flight Services, Awesome Aviation Group's existing flight operations business based in South Africa. Awesome Flight Services has in turn acquired the NAC international contracts and maintenance business divisions from NAC. The assets and staff of the NAC international contracts and maintenance divisions will be integrated into the existing Awesome Flight Services infrastructure. The combined businesses will be rebranded as FlyAwesome and the company will trade under this brand globally.

Tertius van Jaarsveld (currently executive director of operations, NAC) has been appointed as CEO of FlyAwesome; Martin Banner (CEO, NAC) and David Vinokur (CEO, global capital) have both been appointed to the board of FlyAwesome and Dieter Ebeling (CEO, Awesome Aviation Group) has been appointed executive chairman.

There will be a transition period whilst existing contracts are in place, but all future contracts globally will be serviced under the FlyAwesome brand.

Internationally, NAC has acquired 50% of FlyAwesome Australia who recently gained an Australian AOC, with immediate endeavours underway to establish a Europe-Middle East Base to service existing operational deployments in that region.

Expanding the successful formula in Awesome Flight Logistics, the dry leasing JV between the groups, NAC will be contributing aircraft assets and taking a 50% stake in Awesome Asset Securities in Australia, an aircraft asset ownership company held by Awesome Aviation Group, thus increasing the fleet of aircraft assets owned within the NAC and Awesome Aviation Group JVs.

After these transactions, the combined entities will therefore have two distinct offerings in the supply of aircraft: FlyAwesome, offering ACMI and operations and Awesome Flight Logistics and Awesome Asset Securities offering dry lease solutions.

Other companies and divisions of NAC and Awesome Group remain unaffected by this transaction and will continue trading as normal.

Martin Banner, CEO of NAC said ”Our JV with Awesome Aviation over the past decade has achieved amazing results and we are very excited to expand our relationship to incorporate all of our global flight operations and aircraft leasing assets. The quality of our customer base, our aircraft and our expanded suite of services, our keen focus on quality and safety, combined with our terrific pool of skilled people and resources will bring enormous benefits to the market in the future.”

Dieter Ebeling, CEO Awesome Aviation Groupcommented “This is the coming together of two exceptional businesses. With our friends at NAC, we are adding significant scale, infrastructure, skill and capability to an already highly successful model. We will increase our aircraft fleet and operations bases substantially, resulting in huge benefits to our customers. The streamlining of flight operations, the expanded aircraft asset ownership and the human capital being deployed with this “dream team” in special missions operations will make for a formidable force in the contracts leasing environment.”