Spear’s Review

Founding partner and CEO of Luxaviation UK, part of the Luxembourg-based Luxaviation group, George Galanopoulos also heads the firm’s charter sales in Europe.

Galanopoulos, a trained pilot and authorised examiner for the Civil Aviation Authority, set up the company, then known as London Executive Aviation, with finance professional Patrick Margetson-Rushmore in 1996. They started out by flying ‘the horse racing fraternity’ in the UK before moving on to a variety of international charterers.

‘Our aircraft owners today are probably in their 40s on average,’ Galanopoulos says. ‘What we see now are the new entrants [into the market] – the YouTubers, the influencers – who are coming to private aviation, initially chartering.’ As this new group becomes wealthier, he added, they do consider owning aircraft.

The company specialises in dealing with all manner of aviation-related requests, from queries about financing to offering high-end charter experiences, from ‘a luxury cruise to the Galápagos’ to an ‘exclusive cultural trip to Rome and the Vatican’.