Air charter Brokerage

[mustfly]

A simple and probably dumb question, but to set up an air charter brokerage, do you require accreditation from the CAA or any other professional body?

[LGW Vulture]

No...nowt required, other than patience and clients. That is until they - the CAA - decide to introduce ATOL requirements to the industry!

[srs what?]

Very touch market to get into though and I believe when you start chartering aircraft with more than xxx number of seats you need ATOL/ABTA...

The Baltic Air Charter Association (BACA) (http://www.baca.org.uk/) is a good body to join, several pi*s-up's errr I mean Networking Lunches a year.

[BOTFOJ]

the proposal by the CAA to regulate Brokers was overturned when a broker argued succesfully against it in court. It was all a money raising excercise for the Travel Trust fund anyway, you now only need to be covered if you are taking on contracts as the principle rather than as an agent.

The market is dominated by 2 or 3 big boys plus several other medium companies that aspire to the big league, that said, there are also a lot of one man bands out there making a decent living.

Do your homework and most importantly get some clients first not the other way around, there are too many brokers out there undercutting each other for the business so try and find a niche and build up some loyalty. Also make sure you get to build up your relationships with the operators as you get a massive difference in response if they know you are not a time waster,

Would recommend the BACA meetings (p'ss ups) as a good place to network (hate that fugging word, but thats what it is) but the council also serves a useful purpose if youre getting started, used to be bit of a coffin-dodgers old boys 'remember when we were great' club but is more informal now.

good luck!

[EricCartman]

in the States that is a big N O and I believe in the UK as well

you might try calling Air Partner and just ask them if they have any official stuff since you are thinking about doing $34MM in flying and you need to do your research before you pick a broker.

CAA is probably like FAA....which simply put only care that you disclose that you ARE A BROKER and NOT AN OPERATOR