26 AIRLINER WORLD APRIL 2018
Aviation broaden its portfolio, most
particularly in January 2017 when
it launched a leasing arm, Chorus
Aviation Capital, led by its President
Steve Ridolfi, who joined the company
after a highly successful career at
Bombardier Aerospace.
Randell explained how each of the
current businesses – including the
charter operations of Voyageur Airways- contributes to the revenue of the
group. “There are different ways of
looking at the revenue side. One is if
you include all the pass-through costs
and the controllable costs for which we
are generally compensated by
Air Canada.
“If you say that those are revenues that
we really don’t control – nor the costs
we recover – then if you take those out
[of the figures] it’s interesting, because
in the third quarter of 2017 [the fiscal
year is the calendar year], it shows that
we have around 35% of our revenues
coming from the contract flying side.
The remaining 65% comes from ‘other
activities’, which include aircraft leasing
(which is the greatest part of that),
charter and other contract flying that
we do through Voyageur Airways.
There are also other revenue streams
that are playing an important part in
improving our bottom-line such as our
MRO business, our parts business, and
so on.
“If you look at the same quarter a year
prior (3Q16), it was a 44:56 split. So, you
can see how other revenues are really
building in relation to our total revenue
production for Chorus.
If you put those revenues back in, you’d
have a very high percentage that would
be related to the capacity purchase
agreement (CPA) with Air Canada itself,
because those costs of operating for
which we are reimbursed are very high - fuel, NavCanada fees, the labour
element and more.”
These figures underline the
successful delivery of the business plan
for Chorus Avaition, which was
created in 2010 – to diversify the
revenue streams and not depend on
one major contract.
Regional Giant
For Jazz Aviation, a more recent
development was Air Canada’s switch
from using ‘Jazz’ to ‘Express’ for its
regional services brand. Viewed from
the outside, the move seemed like a
considerable upheaval for Jazz, but
Randell confirmed that the overall out-
come has been positive.
“First of all, Jazz provides Air Canada
with 70% of its regional lift. Despite
other carriers being introduced, we
have been showing available seat mile
(ASM) growth year-on-year because
we’re operating more of the larger
aeroplanes,” said the CEO. “Within
Air Canada, our relevance certainly
remains very high. Air Canada’s
decision to put the Express brand on
its regionals is consistent with all othermajor airlines. So, it was hard to argue
that, given their diversification, each
should carry probably a different name
from a public distribution point of view.
Therefore, we migrated over to the
common Express brand,” he added.
Regarding capacity growth in Jazz’s
early days, in around 2006, the air-
line had only 15 aeroplanes that had
more than 50 seats. “As time has gone
on, we’ve migrated that quite sub-
stantially, and today we have a total of
4 4 Bombardier Dash 8-Q400s and 21
CRJ900s,” Randell explained. “We have,
at the same time, retired quite a number
of the 50-seat jets and we’ve also retired
some of the smaller Dash 8-100s, leav-
ing us with just 15 of that variant going
forward. We were, at one point, more
than double that. So, we have seen
quite a transition into larger aircraft.”Voyageur Airways is
generally used for
smaller aircraft, crew,
maintenance and insur-
ance (ACMI) contracts.
AIRTEAMIMAGES.COM/
GARRY LEWIS
Another area Voyageur
Airways is heavily
involved in is supporting
NATO and the United
Nations – here local
Africans pose for the
photographer with one
of its aircraft.
ALL IMAGES CHORUS
AVIATION UNLES S STATED
Resplendent in its
former Air Canada Jazz
livery, this de Havilland
Canada DHC-8 Dash
8-100 is one of 15 of the
type still in the carrier’s
fleet. AVIATION IMAGE
NETWORK/BAILEY