Leaving on a Jetplane
Copyright© 2024 by The Horse With No Name
Chapter 33: Cross-Wind
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 33: Cross-Wind - Ian, the son of British immigrants, finds his life changed after a family tragedy and decides to make the best of his ambitions and dreams. And nothing gets you to new adventures as fast as your own airplane...
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa mt/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual Romantic BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Workplace Sharing Polygamy/Polyamory Anal Sex Double Penetration Exhibitionism Massage Oral Sex Nudism
A more detailed description of the events at the Nürburgring from Ian’s perspective including the capers of Ira in the following chapter can be found in Chapters 77 to 80 of “In The Long Run”
The plane that had come out of maintenance was our JS-31 Executive Shuttle. Since we had abandoned the ‘special flights’, and Esther’s original scheme had never taken off because she had turned her hotel into a tropical resort instead, the plane had been spending quite a lot of time on the ground lately. I had actually considered selling it, but Fred argued against it, reminding me that, had it not been in maintenance at the time, it would have been a much less fuel intensive alternative for flying Mark’s people into Samedan. We also needed a plane to shuffle staff about between our bases. Letting them go by hire car was simply wasting too many duty hours.
Back from Hungary, I entered the office on Monday for our team meeting.
“Right, morning everyone, what’s the latest?” I asked.
“We’re making out like bandits on the Courchevel flights,” Fred reported. “We hiked up the prices two times already and we’re still selling out the thing every time. The Volkswagen flights are sold out too. We should really think about getting our hands on some ATPs, and time’s of the essence.”
“We have just gone through a massive investment,” I argued. “And why is time of the essence?”
“They only built 65 of them to begin with, two have crashed, so there are only 63 to get. SunAir is starting to phase them out, and WestAir of Sweden is working on a program to convert them to freighters. Once they are converted they’re gone from the passenger market, so we either get ourselves some of those within the next few months, or we’ll have to introduce Dash-8s or ATRs to maximize our yield. And that means a break in commonality. The ATP, although initially named JS-61, is not directly related to our JS-31 and JS-41s, but the retraining requirements are minimal as they are all manufactured by British Aerospace.”
“Would we have any other use for those, or just the Volkswagen milk run?” I asked.
“I’ve talked to Jens,” Fred replied. “Air Berlin has a few shorter routes where they struggle to fill their 737s, but a 70-seater would be well filled – Nuremburg to Heringsdorf for instance. The slight increase in travel time wouldn’t matter much, so they would delegate some additional routes to us.”
“Bea, what about the financial implications?” I asked.
“I did a rather conservative projection. We are likely to post the tax office a cheque over 500 million at the end of the year. I know you want us to pay our fair share in taxes, but if we took out another loan of 250 million, we would still be paying more in taxes than some companies that are much bigger than we are.””
“Alright,” I said, rubbing my face, thinking about the situation. “Fred, let’s say we borrow another 250 million. How many planes would that get us?”
“Probably ten, including refurbishment,” he said. “That is if we can get our hands on them before WestAir have snatched them up.”
“Why are there so few of them?” I asked him. “And they’re relatively cheap. There has to be a caveat somewhere.”
“Not really,” Fred answered. “BAe were just too late to the party. After the oil crisis of ‘79 buying turboprops was the way to go, but by the time the ATP entered the market in ‘86, Bombardier and Aerospatiale had already sown it up. It is actually a superior plane, especially compared to the cramped cabins of a Dash-8. But being the best dancer at the party isn’t much use if you arrive after the band has played.”
“Nobody wanted an insular type in their fleet,” I suspected.
“Exactly,” Fred agreed with me. “SunAir are the only ones who have a fleet similar to ours, but they are phasing out the Jetstreams now, which means the ATPs have to go too or they would become insular.”
“Well, I guess they’ll find a new home with us,” I said. “Bea, please talk to the bankers about that loan, Fred will deal with the acquisition, and Jack will eventually ferry them. Blimey, Mondays are always so bloody expensive.”
Everybody chuckled.
Bea had not exaggerated. Our numbers looked much better than expected. The partnership with Air Berlin proved to be a very lucrative one. Even now, nearly ten years after the reunification of Germany, the aviation market was still in constant flux. Air Berlin was still undergoing a major transformation from a tourist airline to a mainline airline. It had only been two years since they had started to sell tickets on the free market rather than exclusively through tourist agencies, and they were still expanding their network, away from exclusively flying to tourist destinations to also connecting all major metropolitan areas in Europe and the middle east.
With our big partner running a hub-and-spoke business model, we profited from their success as demand from smaller airfields to their major hubs was growing steadily. We tried our best to maximize yield by using any available Dash-7 on the very popular routes, but by May it became obvious that the decision to buy the seventy-seat ATPs should not have come any later.
Air Berlin had a handful of routes they wanted to push our way, and we already had some that could definitely use an upgrade in the number of available seats. However, we had parked over twenty planes for a D-check in Dresden, and we were hardly the only company they worked for, so realistically, the ATPs would not come online before the change from summer to winter time table. They hadn’t even finished all the JS-41s yet.
For the next months our lives became somewhat calmer. Fred ran the shop quite efficiently, so I didn’t really need to involve myself too much in the day-to-day business, which allowed me to concentrate on the charter business, which meant flying Mark and his various ladies to all kinds of sporting events.
The most memorable of such events was Nadja’s first test of her new race car in April. This was not exactly my area of expertise, and I would normally not have stayed to witness the proceedings if it hadn’t been for Ira’s wish to attend. I noticed quite quickly that she was more than just fleetingly interested in motor racing. She watched the odd F1 race at home, but once there at the Nürburgring she basically left me to spend my time talking to Mark, while she and little Jenny whizzed about among the cars or behind the pit wall.
Nadja’s new car was an odd little thing. Apparently a replica of an old East German sportscar, which sounded like an oxymoron, but with a BMW engine, it was so low a Great Dane could almost have looked over it. Just getting into it required a certain amount of gymnastics skills.
Imagine my surprise when Nadja, after several test runs, handed the car over to thirteen year old Jenny. I had never thought such a thing was even legal, let alone that such a young girl would be able to tame a four-hundred horsepower racing car.
Well, I was wrong. Our company sponsored her for a reason. She had won four karting championships, the first one at age seven, and she was on her way to do it again this year. And truth be told, she wasn’t quite that little any more. Even at age thirteen she was almost the same height as Nadja, and she certainly had not only grown in length. That young lady was becoming a woman, and quite quickly in fact. It was not hard to see why Mark sometimes felt slightly uncomfortable in his role as her stepfather.
But I was in for another surprise when the team wheeled out a BMW M5 race car and both Nadja and Ira climbed into it and set off in pursuit of little Jenny in the other car. Mark explained that the team had a little side hustle taking paying customers around this legendary track as passengers, but usually that were single laps, while Ira was treated to an entire stint of seven laps, which meant a time of nearly an hour. Those cars were seriously fast. Our Dash-7s were slower if we had a healthy lick of wind on the nose.
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