History
The group began with Safair Freighters, founded in South Africa in 1970, which with Safmarine acquired Tropair. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom in 1972, Air Bridge Carriers was established. In September 1992, the company was renamed Hunting Cargo Airlines and in 1997, all airline operations were transferred to Ireland. In 1994, Safair Freighters was renamed Safair and as a result of the Hunting Group's sale of its aviation-related companies in June 1998 to the joint consortium of Compagnie Maritime Belge/Safair (party of the Imperial Group), the airline was rebranded the company as Air Contractors.
The Imperial Group transferred its shares in the company to 3P Air Freighters in 2007. Air Contractors acquired French carrier Europe Airpost on 14 March 2008.[4] Following the acquisition of EAP into the ASL group of companies, the group was rebranded ASL Aviation Group, representing the three core activities of the group; Airlines, Support and Leasing.
In 2010, the acquisition of the Safair Group was finalised and in 2013 Safair introduced a broad-based black economic empowerment programme, allowing ASL to retain a minority share in the company.
Low-cost airline FlySafair was established by Safair in 2013. On 4 December 2014, the company acquired the Farnair Group in Switzerland.[5]
On 4 June 2015, ASL Aviation Group announced that Air Contractors would be rebranded as ASL Airlines Ireland, Europe Airpost as ASL Airlines France, Farnair Hungary as ASL Airlines Hungary and Farnair Switzerland as ASL Airlines Switzerland.[6]
The company acquired TNT Airways and PAN Air on 12 February 2016 and became ASL Airlines Belgium and ASL Airlines Spain.[7]
In 2017, ASL Aviation Group was renamed to ASL Aviation Holdings. ASL Airlines Switzerland ceased airline operations on 1 February 2018,[8] while ASL Airlines Spain ceased all operations in August 2018.[9]
On 4 June 2019, STAR Capital Partnership became the 100% shareholder in the company.[10] In 2021, ASL Airlines United Kingdom was launched.[11]
In 2021, the company reported profits of €43.6m after tax and revenue of €1,131.5m with cash reserves increasing to 46.3% year on year to €192.2m.[3]
ASL acquired 100% ownership of ASL Maintenance (formally X-air services) on 9 August 2022.[12] The company was previously jointly owned on a fifty-fifty basis by ASL and Sabena technics.
In December 2022, the company re-launched joint-venture airline Quikjet Airlines with the renewal of a new air operators certificate and the delivery of its first Boeing 737-800BCF.[13] On 9 January 2023, Quikjet relaunched operations in India with a second Boeing 737-800BCF operating on behalf of Amazon Air.[14]
On 4 March 2023, the company acquired Australian airline Pionair and rebranded it ASL Airlines Australia.[15][16]
