Chapman Freeborn Group CEO sees charter flights becoming strategic business tool amid market uncertainty

Chapman Freeborn Group, a charter brokerage founded in 1973 and part of Avia Solutions Group controlled by Gediminas Žiemelis, is expanding into the United States market and broadening its service portfolio, according to group CEO Svetlana Gerasimova. Gerasimova took up the group CEO role last year after more than 20 years in aviation, including roles at airlines, in aircraft leasing, air cargo, supply chain management, and at an e-commerce platform. She said charter flights are increasingly chosen by clients not as a luxury but as a strategic operational solution, driven by geopolitical instability, supply-chain disruption, aircraft shortages and changing trade flows.

North America, and the United States in particular, is one of the company's primary growth targets; Gerasimova said US clients typically prioritise flexibility, efficiency and time savings over prestige and expect fast responses and tailored solutions. The company currently operates without an air operator's certificate and acts as a broker, though the wider Avia Solutions Group includes Magma Aviation, which operates four Boeing 747 freighters. Chapman Freeborn Group also operates Intradco Global, a specialist animal-transport unit handling racehorses, breeding livestock, wild animals and endangered species with zoos, conservation organisations and animal-welfare experts, and is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA); some flights are planned six to twelve months ahead, though plans can shift as late as one week before departure due to permits, routing or welfare requirements.

The company maintains an onboard courier network of more than 2,000 couriers worldwide for time-critical shipments — biological samples, fashion pieces, aircraft components — including customs clearance and secure preparation, plus a Next Flight Out service for smaller urgent items. In early June, Chapman Freeborn Group launched an aircraft-component supply service targeting aircraft-on-ground situations, covering parts delivery, engine transport and courier shipment to reduce downtime during the busy summer season. The company has also carried out humanitarian missions, including evacuations in the Middle East and transport of aid and specialist equipment to crisis zones where scheduled services are unavailable or insufficient. Gerasimova said the company has a strategy and plan running to 2030, focused on expanding its global network, strengthening commercial and operational capabilities, investing in digital tools, and growing its Americas and Asia-Pacific businesses. On sustainability, she said the company selects the most appropriate aircraft and routing for each mission to avoid unnecessary positioning flights, calculates charter-flight emissions, and offers carbon-offsetting options through a partnership with 4AIR.

This case belongs to a broader shift in charter brokerage, where firms compete less on possessing aircraft and more on the breadth of adjacent services they can bundle around a flight — parts logistics, couriers, specialist animal transport, humanitarian lift. A brokerage without its own operator's certificate can still capture demand across all these categories by coordinating capacity from operators within its wider group, as Chapman Freeborn does through Avia Solutions Group's Magma Aviation.

The framing of charter as a strategic operational tool rather than a discretionary luxury reflects how corporate and industrial buyers now weigh flexibility and speed against supply-chain and geopolitical risk, pushing brokers to sell reliability and turnaround time as much as capacity. The AOG parts service and the onboard courier network both extend the brokerage model into time-critical logistics adjacent to passenger and cargo charter, where urgency rather than distance sets the price.

What happens next depends on how the US expansion and the 2030 strategy translate into measurable network growth in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, and on whether the sustainability commitments around routing efficiency and 4AIR-backed offsetting become a differentiator with corporate clients scrutinising emissions.