Fly Aeolus is a Belgian limited liability partnership ( BV) which offers private jet flights in the form of an

air taxi An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand. In 2001 air taxi operations were promoted in the United States by a NASA and aerospace industry study on the potential Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) ...

under a fractional ownership model. The company was founded in 2009 in the city of Antwerp, where it still has its headquarters. Other office locations are located in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

and

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

. Fly Aeolus is the largest

Cirrus SR-22 The Cirrus SR22 is a single-engine four- or five-seat composite aircraft built from 2001 by Cirrus Aircraft of Duluth, Minnesota. It is a development of the Cirrus SR20, with a larger wing, higher fuel capacity, and a more powerful, 310-horsepo ...

operator in Europe and flies on-demand to a total of 1,600 airports and airfields on the continent. Among them, Fly Aeolus has aircraft bases in

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of ...

Semur-en-Auxois Semur-en-Auxois () is a commune of the Côte-d'Or department in eastern France. The politician François Patriat, the engineers Edmé Régnier L'Aîné (1751–1825) and Émile Dorand (1866-1922), and the Encyclopédiste Philippe Guéneau de ...

(France),

Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and ...

Kulmbach Kulmbach () is the capital of the district of Kulmbach in Bavaria in Germany. The town is famous for Plassenburg Castle, which houses the largest tin soldier museum in the world, and for its sausages, or ''Bratwürste''. Geography Location K ...

, Schönhagen,

Husum Husum (, frr, Hüsem) is the capital of the ''Kreis'' (district) Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The town was the birthplace of the novelist Theodor Storm, who coined the epithet "the grey town by the sea". It is also the home of ...

and

Strausberg Strausberg () is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located 30 km east of Berlin. With a population of about 27,000 it is the largest town in the district of Märkisch-Oderland. History Strausberg was founded ''circa'' 1240, and in 1333 its fir ...

(Germany).

History

Fly Aeolus was founded in 2009 by Stefaan Ghijs and Vincent Wigmans. Ghijs discovered low-cost private jet flying in the form of an air taxi as a niche market during his master's degree in

aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

. Wigmans previously worked in a private jet maintenance company. It was only in 2009 that their partnership as such was officially established. The first flight of the service provider Fly Aeolus took place two years later from Antwerp, Belgium to

Vichy Vichy (, ; ; oc, Vichèi, link=no, ) is a city in the Allier department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of central France, in the historic province of Bourbonnais. It is a spa and resort town and in World War II was the capital of V ...

in France. Following this success, the company continued to develop. The aircraft fleet was expanded to other countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. The initial west-northern European area of operations was extended to the entire continent. Since 2015 Fly Aeolus operates in cooperation with the Belgian air taxi company SkyCab.

Business Model

The model of an air taxi resembles the taxi industry but in the area of private aviation. The service is based on a

fractional ownership Fractional ownership is a method in which several unrelated parties can share in, and mitigate the risk of, ownership of a high-value tangible asset, usually a jet, yacht or piece of resort real estate. It can be done for strictly monetary reasons ...

model. Hence customers are joint owners of the Cirrus fleet. The actual private owners, on the other hand, make their aircraft available and receive a commission for every hour flown. Fly Aeolus' aircraft and commercially qualified pilots are distributed in the north-west of Europe. The use of the Cirrus SR-22 aircraft enables landing on small airfields. The concept of Fly Aeolus B.V. aims thereby to save the costs and save time for the traveller. Fly Aeolus offers also jet card membership programs which allow their members to pay an average 5-10% less for flights than the retail rate for non-members. In 2019, Fly Aeolus launched an aircraft sales and acquisition division next to its existing

service: Fly Aeolus Aircraft Sales and Acquisitions.

Fleet

Considered by the COPA (Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association) and AOPA ( Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association) as one of the safest single engine aircraft in general aviation thanks to the use of CAPS (

Cirrus Airframe Parachute System The Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) is a whole-plane ballistic parachute recovery system designed specifically for Cirrus Aircraft's line of general aviation light aircraft including the SR20, SR22 and SF50. The design became the f ...

), Fly Aeolus has a standardised fleet of

aircraft. Including the pilot, 4 passengers can be transported in the single piston aircraft. With 15 Cirrus SR-22 aircraft in operation, Fly Aeolus is the largest Cirrus provider in Europe.

References

{{Portal bar, Transport, Aviation 2009 establishments in Belgium Companies based in Antwerp Charter airlines