What an Air Charter Broker Is
An air charter broker is an intermediary that sources an aircraft from certified operators and arranges the charter. It owns no aircraft, employs no crew and has no operational control, so it does not need, and cannot hold, an air operator certificate. The operator holds it. That certificate makes the operator responsible for the crew, the maintenance and the safety of the flight. A broker can be excellent, and most charters are booked through one. The party answerable for the aircraft is the company named on the certificate, not the one named on the invoice.
What a broker is
A charter broker takes a request, for example 6 people from Nice to Mykonos on Thursday morning, and finds an aircraft for it. It negotiates the terms, issues the contract, takes the payment and manages the arrangements around the flight.
The broker does not fly. It owns no aircraft, employs no crew, has no maintenance organisation and exercises no operational control. All of those belong to the operator, the company that flies the aircraft. On the day, the aircraft and its crew are the operator’s.
The charter market is split across hundreds of small operators. Finding the right aircraft on the right day is real work, and most passengers cannot do it for themselves. What a passenger buys from a broker is an arrangement, not a flight.
The certificate
Commercial air transport in Europe depends on the air operator certificate, or AOC. The AOC is issued to the company that operates the flights. It certifies that the company is competent and equipped to carry them out safely.
The holder answers for everything the AOC covers: flight operations, the crew and their training, the airworthiness and maintenance of the aircraft, and compliance with the operating rules in Commission Regulation (EU) No 965/2012.
Oversight belongs to the national authority of the state that issued the AOC. In Greece that is the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority (HCAA). An EU country may instead transfer initial certification, continuing oversight and enforcement to EASA, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, under the Basic Regulation. Where it has done so, oversight belongs to EASA.
A broker cannot hold an AOC. The certificate attaches to the company that operates the aircraft, and a broker, by definition, does not operate one.
Commercial and private are different regimes
People are most often caught out by the difference between an aircraft operated commercially and one operated privately.
Commercial air transport means carrying passengers for payment, and it requires an AOC. A chartered flight falls under this regime.
Non-commercial operations cover privately operated aircraft. They include a more demanding category flown under a declaration instead of a certificate. Responsibility sits with the party that signed the declaration, and the aircraft may not be sold as a charter.
So an owner cannot lawfully charter out an aircraft while keeping it in private operation. To be sold as a charter, the aircraft has to be placed on an operator’s AOC. Most owners who charter out their aircraft do exactly this.
What the broker is paid
A broker is paid in one of two ways, and a charterer is entitled to know which one applies.
A margin. The broker buys the flight from the operator and sells it on at a higher price. The charterer does not see what the operator was paid.
A fee. The broker charges a stated amount for finding and managing the flight, and the operator’s price is passed on unchanged.
Both are proper and both are normal. A quotation shows a single figure either way, so the charterer has to ask which structure it uses. The same question applies to yachts, and what a charter broker is explains how it works there.
What a good broker adds
A good broker adds three things, and none of them is the aircraft.
Judgement about operators. A broker who has placed flights for years knows which operators answer at midnight, whose crews know the Aegean in August, and whose aircraft are as young as the photographs suggest.
The difficult parts of Greece. These include slots at Mykonos and Santorini, parking on the mainland, and the permit a non-EU-registered aircraft needs from the HCAA before it may fly a commercial leg into Greece. A slot is an approved time for an aircraft to land or take off. The limits are set out in what an FBO is.
Recovery. When an aircraft becomes unserviceable, meaning unfit to fly, what happens next is the whole value of the relationship: how quickly a replacement appears, and whether one appears at all. It cannot be seen until it is needed.
What to ask before booking a flight
- Which company operates the flight, and under whose AOC? Ask for a name and the issuing authority.
- Is this a brokered flight or the operator’s own aircraft? Either is fine, but you need to know which.
- Is the price a margin or a fee?
- What happens if the aircraft becomes unserviceable, and who pays for the replacement?
- Where is the money held between payment and departure, and what releases it?