AVIAA has reached an agreement with Europe’s smart purchasing business Convolus to merge their operations, with plans to add more than 150 new aircraft, and extend into Europe with the establishment of an office in Munich.
Irena Deville, co-founder and chief executive officer of Convolus, will become managing director in Europe and the Middle East for AVIAA—where she will be working alongside California-based chief executive officer Gillian Hayes and her team.
Ms Deville said: “Business aviation in Europe remains significantly fragmented. The opportunity to scale up and expand with AVIAA means we can optimize technology solutions. Combining our procurement data sets globally to better inform pricing, predict spend, and streamline our transactions. It all comes down to better serving our members and suppliers as we add new categories to support our mainstay pillars.”
The AVIAA community will support a member fleet of nearly 500 aircraft once the acquisition has formally concluded this month (January), as well as a network of suppliers with global operations across every spend category, including a robust international FBO network.
Existing Convolus members will be seamlessly integrated into the AVIAA community. They will also be able to accrue further cost savings in the AVIAA supply chain, which covers expanded service categories, including insurance, maintenance, fuel, business operations, and crew training.
Ms Hayes, chief executive officer at AVIAA, said: “This marks a significant strategic step for us, which will enable us to deliver larger scale global purchasing for our collective members and suppliers.”
At the Corporate Jet Investor’s annual 2019 conference in London, Ms Hayes highlighted how the deal will help the business to grow, enabling AVIAA to deliver value for members and its supply network in new areas, bringing expanded procurement services to new European members.
AVIAA’s predominately US-based members will be able to draw benefits and savings from the enlarged group’s 100-strong European FBO network, from large multi-destination handlers to stand-alone individual FBOs.