Nautilus jet to hit heights of style
MELBOURNE’S rich elite will no longer have to travel like regular schmucks when they want to pop out for a quick chopper ride over the Reef.
Thriving homegrown helicopter operator Nautilus Aviation has just added its first private jet to its fleet for a price of about $15 million.
The company’s CEO Aaron Finn said the investment would allow tourists with deep enough pockets to quickly reach any of Nautilus’s seven bases across Australia, where they would hop in a chopper for the trip of a lifetime.
“It’s for transferring guests between our different resort locations,” he said.
“We’re already in discussions with different inbound, high-end tour operators from places like the United States, so they can use it when they send clients out.”
The Embraer Phenom 300E jet will be based in Sydney and Melbourne and charted by ACS Air, which will also charter the aircraft when it is on Nautilus tasks.
“They operate it and pay us as they’re using it – it’s sort of a business within itself,” Mr Finn said.
The arrival of Syrian billionaire Ghassan Aboud on the scene with his three Crystalbrook Collection hotel developments in Cairns bodes well for the tourism industry.
“All of the sudden, we might be seeing a different clientele in town, so we could see (private jets) in Cairns a lot more,” Mr Finn said.
Nautilus has kicked another goal with a four-year extension of two multimillion-dollar Westpac Lifesavers chopper contracts in Sydney and Moruya in New South Wales.
The company previously signed on for a one-year trial.
Mr Finn put the recent successes down to having a modern fleet, stringent safety protocols and quality staff, saying “without good people, you don’t have a good business.”