When two of sub-Saharan Africa’s most prominent business aviation concerns announced a joint venture in Guyana in March, the industry took notice. Both companies saw their domestic performance plateauing, and international expansion seemed the next logical step.
“We came across an opportunity in South Africa, a project that we’d been working on since early 2022,” Dawit Lemma, CEO of Krimson Aviation, told AIN. As a ground-handling specialist, Krimson needed a flight services partner.
The market in Guyana is witnessing an oil, gas, and petroleum (OGP) explosion. “We saw an opportunity to use our expertise to provide ground services to the OGP operators,” Lemma said. “The local operator there, Xen Aviation, was interested not just in ground handling, but also in flight operations. That’s when my thoughts turned to Bestfly.”
Lemma saw a common interest area, given Bestfly’s status as a key stakeholder in oil and gas support in Angola. “We are very familiar with Bestfly’s capabilities on the continent,” he said.
Nuno Pereira, managing director of Bestfly, told AIN its five-year expansion plan had achieved as much as it could have to date in Angola. “We wanted to continue to grow,” he said. “The Bestfly-Krimson partnership—now Guyanese company BFK Aviation—was a no-brainer because, in reality, Bestfly is setting up a series of joint ventures and partnerships around the world that include but are not limited to the Caribbean, Europe-to-Europe, Europe-to-West Africa, and other areas, like Dubai and the Middle East.
“It was a very good opportunity to integrate our growth strategy. That’s why we decided to go ahead and expand the footprint of Bestfly to Guyana in partnership with our Ethiopian colleagues. It is basically a south-south approach, ultimately expanding to support local African leaders in the aviation industry.”
Although the initial target is South Africa, the expansion will almost certainly impact business aviation in Africa, where both partners are experienced hands. Pereira held the role of vice chairman of the African Business Aviation Association (AfBAA) for five years, while Lemma was the long-time AfBAA Ethiopian chapter representative and is now its international director. In addition to focusing on business aviation hotspots in South Africa, Nigeria, and Morocco, both men are seen as leading the charge in the rest of Africa.
Pereira said BFK’s emphasis was not just on OGP but also on scheduled regional services, maintenance, ground handling, FBO, and cargo handling—all dependent on the requirements and capacity on the ground. It will also move into capacity building, training, and consulting. “We’re not entering as an extractor,” he said. “We’re coming in as a contributor or builder of the aviation sector and the community at large.”
BFK’s target is emerging markets, as it comes from a continent that is full of them, Lemma said. “Going into other emerging markets is, if not exactly niche, something we’re good and successful at,” he said. “Wherever it’s hard to operate, or difficult for us, it’s a business opportunity. The ecosystem that we’re trying to develop at BFK should and can be applied to any emerging market: South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Why not even Europe? Why not Eastern Europe, for example?”
Both companies are prospering on their home turf. In 2022, Krimson saw Its client base, revenues, and number of flights all grow by at least 40 percent. “It’s the right trajectory,” Lemma said. “Krimson is very much at the plateau of where we can expand to, not just geographically, but in services because our business model is very limited. For all intents and purposes, we’re brokers: we get requests from clients and we find a third party that can fulfill that.”
The company’s eight-year expansion plan to 2030 involves shifting from subcontractor and broker services to fulfillment. “In addition to BFK, we’re also looking at consolidating our presence in the region—making the Horn of Africa ours. Southern Africa is dominated by South Africa, Central Africa by Bestfly, Western Africa by Nigeria and that market, and Eastern Africa by the Kenyan market providers. We want to be in the Horn of Africa; we like going to places where it’s very difficult to operate.”
Krimson’s operations in Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and South Sudan, are quickly catching up with home base numbers in Ethiopia. “We’re preparing for that plateau by consolidating our resources and focusing on making the Horn of Africa Krimson’s region, our home territory, and transitioning from broker to actually fulfilling services with equipment and facilities,” he said.
Lemma continues to maintain that any FBO Krimson sets up will not be in Ethiopia, but this has nothing to do with market size. “The weekend during the African Union summit alone would justify an FBO,” he said. “Let’s say the non-competitive or monopolistic nature of the market regulations is still a limiting factor. To be honest with you, Ethiopia does see a few more operators, but I haven’t seen any shift in 10 years, which means the private sector is developing.
“It’s still a case of fighting for scraps off the table of our beloved home carrier, Ethiopian Airlines. As much as I would love to do it, it would take the same amount of energy and resources to set up three FBOs in other African countries as it would launch an FBO here.”
Lemma is studying Ghana, not just with FBOs in mind but as a West African springboard. “We’re in discussion to set up an office there to manage the Western African region,” he said. “We feel Ghana is aligned with a lot of our criteria. It’s a tremendously emerging market.
“Ghana is going to be the first base we set up outside of Addis Ababa and that’s really to cater to the Western African market and opportunity. Ironically, this is a testament to how sometimes stars align. With Bestfly in Senegal, there’s an opportunity for us to own that corridor, that coastline from Ghana all the way west up to Senegal and everything in between.”
From its Angolan base, Bestfly has invested in other locations. Last year was another period of growth, and its presence is expanding worldwide. In 2021, it acquired WestJet in Portugal, as well as TICV’s operation in Cape Verde, which now offers scheduled and charter flights as Bestfly Cabo Verde, he said.
More Growth
“In 2022, we grew our fleet to 30 aircraft, in Angola, Cape Verde, Dubai, and Congo Brazzaville, where we have permanent operations,” Lemma said. “We also recently saw major growth in our oil and gas operations through the award from Chevron’s Cabinda Gulf Oil Company of the offshore Angola contract.”
In March, Bestfly also announced a partnership in Senegal with local company Dakar Jet Center. It expects operations to be ready by the end of the year, on the same timeline as Guyana. “It is already a very strong aviation company,” Pereira said. “We are open to all. We have started an expansion strategy that also led us to take 50 percent of a ground-handling company in Portugal.”
It deployed four fully OGP-compliant Leonardo Helicopters AW169s bought directly from the factory in 2021. It also bought another five helicopters from Leonardo for deployment in oil and gas support. The first was delivered in March and went to Senegal to do demonstration flights and static displays.
“On the fixed-wing side, we expect to grow our ATR [regional turboprop] fleet to between eight and 10, which will include additions to the Cape Verde and BFK fleets, and our operation in Aruba, where we expect to start commercial services during the summer,” Pereira said.
He expects the Embraer 190 fleet to go to between four to six aircraft in the next 18 months, while on the business-jet side he sees the fleet increasing to about three big jets.
“We are planning to make Bombardier Globals and the Gulfstream G550 the backbone of our business jet fleet, the first of which should be in service by the summer,” Periera said. “One thing we are very excited about is that, for the first time, Bestfly, in partnership with the Aruba Registry, has a presence this week at EBACE with a G550 in our new colors. The aircraft on static display presents the new product: Bestfly Executive.”
Bestfly is starting to differentiate its branding in the oil and gas and commercial sectors from its business aviation operations. “We also want to reinforce our leadership in ground handling and FBO in Angola, as well as in our plans in Cape Verde, Senegal, and other jurisdictions that are too early to call right now,” he concluded.