South Africa's NAC Charter, Awesome Aviation in merger deal

NAC Charter (NTN, Johannesburg Lanseria) and partner Awesome Aviation (ASM, Johannesburg Lanseria) have agreed to merge their global Flight Operations and Aircraft Leasing businesses with the resulting entity to be rebranded as FlyAwesome (MDW, Johannesburg Lanseria).

In a statement, the two South African charter specialists said that as part of the agreement, NAC has acquired a 50% equity stake in Awesome Flight Services, Awesome Aviation Group’s existing flight operations business based in South Africa, while Awesome Flight Services has, in turn, acquired the NAC International Contracts and Maintenance business divisions from NAC. As such, all divisional assets and staff will be integrated into Awesome Flight Services' existing infrastructure.

Internationally, NAC has acquired 50% of FlyAwesome Australia, which recently secured its Australian AOC, while efforts are underway to establish a Europe/Middle East base to service the firms' existing operational deployments in that region.

Expanding the successful formula in Awesome Flight Logistics, the dry leasing joint-venture between the groups, NAC will be contributing aircraft assets and taking a 50% stake in Awesome Asset Securities in Australia, an aircraft asset ownership company held by Awesome Aviation Group, thus increasing the fleet of aircraft assets owned within the NAC and Awesome Aviation Group JVs.

Once the transactions have been completed, the combined entities will have two distinct offerings in the supply of aircraft: FlyAwesome which will specialize in ACMI and Operations, and Awesome Flight Logistics and Awesome Asset Securities which will offer Dry Lease solutions.

Tertius van Jaarsveld (currently Executive Director of Operations – NAC) has been appointed CEO of FlyAwesome; Martin Banner (CEO - NAC) and David Vinokur (CEO – Global Capital) have both been appointed to the Board of FlyAwesome, while Dieter Ebeling (CEO - Awesome Aviation Group) has been appointed Executive Chairman.

Other companies and divisions of NAC and Awesome Group are unaffected by the transaction and will continue trading as normal, the groups said.