Dragonfly Helicopters' ambition over the next five years is to grow their fleet to a considerable market share of the small-to-medium sized helicopter sector. As part of its expansion plans, Dragonfly, the leasing arm of the Østnes Helicopters Group, is delighted to announce the appointment of David Kelmanson, CEO of Larus Aviation Limited, as its Senior Financial Adviser.
Larus Aviation Limited, based in the United Kingdom, provides highly cost-effective financial advisory and arrangement services to airline, financier, and manufacturer clients in the aviation industry. Furthermore, this commitment by Dragonfly is the next step in attracting future partnerships, in addition to the existing synergies created by the Østnes Group’s "One Stop Shop" capabilities, which encompass procurement, sales, trading, leasing, maintenance, spare parts, remarketing, and general asset management to the helicopter industry.
According to Thomas Wellén, CEO of Dragonfly AS, “the current helicopter market offers a number of exciting growth opportunities. David’s 35+ years’ experience in the aviation sector, most notably in the structured finance arena, will bring added value to us in terms of our business development and asset financing initiatives and we are excited by his addition to our team.”
Kelmanson, who will support Dragonfly in a consultancy capacity, has prior experience of the Nordic aviation market, having previously advised a number of Nordic airline clients, including Flyr, Icelandair and Norwegian Air Shuttle, in their fleet acquisition and financing programmes.
“With a degree of stability returning to the asset financing markets post-pandemic, there are encouraging signs of increasing financier appetite for the aviation sector. I am delighted to be supporting Dragonfly in their strategic helicopter financing efforts at this exciting stage of their development and am looking forward to assuming this new advisory role,” adds Kelmanson.
We would like to welcome David onboard!