From the Cockpit with Chisholm Enterprises’ Chisholm

Bahrain-based Texel Air recently took redelivery of its first 737-800BCF at the end of 2021 and became the first operator in the Middle East to have a 737-800 freighter of any kind. The carrier, which is also currently the only operator of the 737-700 FlexCombi, has now acquired a second -800 that it will send for conversion later in 2022. Cargo Facts caught up with George Chisholm, CEO of Texel parent Chisholm Enterprises, ahead of the company’s official inauguration ceremony for its new 737-800BCF in Bahrain. Cargo Facts : When did you start looking at renewing the fleet with the -800, and how did you choose between the three different conversion programs? George Chisholm : Sometime around the early to middle part of 2020, after the initial wave of COVID, once we figured out how to continue running our business, we started to look at what the future might be and whether it would be more FlexCombis. At that time, we had two -300Fs — one owned and one leased — and we knew we would return one of them. So we started to think about what the replacement aircraft might be and we felt that one of the things we were lacking was capacity and volume. With COVID and the values of aircraft changing, it was the right time for us to look at the -800. We had actually looked at the -800 as early as 2015 or 2016, right at the very early stages of the BCF program, but at that time it was out of our reach. That then leads to the next question of which conversion to choose from. We are both owner and operator, which makes us a little bit more unique. For us, we definitely look at the longer-term value of the airplane. We also want to de-risk the process as much as possible, being a smaller company. So we evaluated all three conversion houses and obviously, the number of pallet positions and most things are largely the same, but for us the biggest sell was having that end-to-end support from the OEM. One final factor was availability. We had good offers from all three but the slots that Boeing offered to us worked the best with our acquisition. CF : Was the need for extra volume partly why you didn’t go for the -700 freighter from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)? GC : Yes, we wanted to keep it within the NG family for fleet compatibility, so it was either going to be a -700 or an -800. But volume was something that we’d always liked with the -300s. We now have the range with the -700FC and we can go up to eight pallets, which is something that we don’t often use on the -300s. So an additional three, four maindeck positions on an -800F was very attractive, and obviously with a similar range profile. CF : How much does the customer base for the -800 overlap with that for the FlexCombi? GC : They’re largely different customers. With the FlexCombi it is more ad hoc charter and project-based work, whereas with the -800 we see it more for express and e-commerce, so more the volume customers. We’ve been flying for some of those with our -300s, which has been great to build the relationship with them. We'll also test out a new narrow-gauge airplane in the region. There are a lot of heavy aircraft flying around the Middle East, but not so many dedicated narrowbody freighters. So that was quite good to use the -300 to sort of test different routes, and now with the -800 it opens up some destinations that are further away such as Turkey, India and Eastern Africa. These are right in that sweet spot from Bahrain for our range with the aircraft. We try to maximize the contract model. Obviously, if there are periods in the weekly schedule where we have a couple of down days and don’t require maintenance, our sales team is always there trying to fill these gaps. CF : You’ll hopefully be at five aircraft by the end of the year. What can we expect beyond that? GC : For now, the -300 is definitely part of the fleet. It’s a little unique but we’re using it quite a bit, especially in the winter months, for horses, for example. At the moment, we have to keep it where it is. If all our plans go accordingly, all five of the aircraft will be heavily committed by the end of this year, which means we’ll have a lack of capacity for ad hoc as we hope to have some longer-term contracts in place for both of those -800s. We looked at replacing the -300 with another -800, but right now it doesn’t make sense. That -300 is actually quite a good tactical aircraft for us with some of the different customer bases that we operate for and some of the smaller routes that maybe don’t require an -800. So it’s a bit of a balance. The FlexCombis are very much in their own world. That being said, we’re already looking at what the next phase might be. There’s still very strong demand from some of our customers for more and we haven’t discounted leasing if we had to react quickly. We obviously have finite resources as a family business and we’ve gone from leasing two aircraft to owning five in quite a short period of time. We wouldn’t want to end up with too many aircraft; it would be easy to sign up for ten speculatively, but for us that’s too vigorous. We are a very conservative company and will move step by step. This story originally appeared in the February 2022 issue of Cargo Facts. Cargo Facts EMEA will take place LIVE May 9-11 in Dubai. Learn more and register.

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