newstodate.aero
AUG 20, 2004 (newstodate): -There has indeed been a structural change in the military market for aircraft brokering, says a leading brokering company in the Nordic region.
-First, today any contract is put out as a tender, and there is a manifest trend towards focus on price alone as the supreme parameter, he says.
-Little customer loyalty remains in this market, so even if you have served a customer for years you may lose the business today because of 50 dollars on the total price of an operation.
-Another issue is that military customers now coordinate their requirements to optimise the use of aircraft capacity to the full. This is of course only natural and positive, but the effect is an immediate reduction of the market volume, he says.
-The only viable strategy left for a broker in this segment is to build up value-added services to distance him from competitors. This requires investments and a long-term perspective hard to sustain in a volatile market. We would go so far as to lease an own aircraft to secure an order with a military customer, even if the assignment was running for two or three months only.
-First, today any contract is put out as a tender, and there is a manifest trend towards focus on price alone as the supreme parameter, he says.
-Little customer loyalty remains in this market, so even if you have served a customer for years you may lose the business today because of 50 dollars on the total price of an operation.
-Another issue is that military customers now coordinate their requirements to optimise the use of aircraft capacity to the full. This is of course only natural and positive, but the effect is an immediate reduction of the market volume, he says.
-The only viable strategy left for a broker in this segment is to build up value-added services to distance him from competitors. This requires investments and a long-term perspective hard to sustain in a volatile market. We would go so far as to lease an own aircraft to secure an order with a military customer, even if the assignment was running for two or three months only.