Baltic Bizav Forum Host Modernizes To Support Growth

The VIP-Center at Latvia’s Riga International Airport was the venue for the fifth annual Baltic Business Aviation Forum on August 5. Organized by the Russian United Business Aviation Association, the event drew members of the growing business aviation community from across the Baltic region, including Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Hosting the meeting was Riga-based Flight Consulting Group (FCG), which has been in the flight planning and support business since 2010. It is the parent of FBO Riga, which handles much of the private aviation traffic in the Latvian capital.

FCG says it is seeing annual growth of between 15 and 20 percent in the number of flights supported by its 22-strong operations department, which it claims is bucking a wider negative business aviation traffic trend across Europe. It mainly supports executive charter operators, as well as aircraft management companies and private operators, with an even split of clients between Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. FCG supports between 700 and 800 flights each month, mainly for the 90-odd business jets it services regularly.

This year has seen FCG expand its ground handling supervision network to all airports in Kazakhstan. It also has supervisors available to support operators in Lithuania, Estonia and Belarus, providing slot arrangements, handling, access to private terminals, refueling, catering, flight following and ground transportation.

Last year, FCG developed its own flight planning and support IT platform called Air Traffic Operation Management (Atom). As well as integrating key flight planning software tools (such as JetPlanner, JeppView, PPS and Arinc), Atom is intended to incorporate multiple aspects of flight support services, business planning and customer relations. The company aims to complete integration of the system next year.

According to FCG, Atom has allowed the company to minimize the potential for errors in flight support operations, while also providing a highly personalized level of service to individual operators. In 2014, the privately owned company started modernizing and expanding its operations department with a focus on deploying new technology, a revised manual for procedures and standards, and a program to recruit and train suitably qualified staff in a location that does not have a long business aviation heritage.

FBO Riga opened in the airport’s new business aviation complex in September last year. The facility also houses FCG’s operations center, which has a  “digital wall” equipped with 12 widescreen monitors to present all aspects of the movements being supported each day around the world.