Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Tuesday the 2nd of July, which means peak season for European holidays is well underway. It's not been the smoothest of starts, particularly for passengers using EasyJet from Gatwick Airport, as well as for those on British Airways and Whiz Air. We've seen dozens of cancellations

each day over the last weekend bamed on bad weather air traffic control restrictions. EasyJet,

by the way, assures me it has no crew shortage. But today's guest believes there is a general

shortage of aircraft across Europe, and he is better

placed to know that than anyone else, because he is Jediminas Ziamilis, and he is chair

of the Aviar Solutions Group, which I call the world's biggest unknown airline.

Jeddiminas, you're an ACMI provider. That's also known as wet leasing.

Well, what exactly does it mean?

It means that we are providing tailor-made services

to the schedule carriers and we act exclusively B2B. So people will not see our brand. We will

see sticker of our customer on airframe. People will see stewardesses, which in line with

the brand of our customer. And simply we will get a final product from B2C provider.

So we in other words, we're airline to airline.

That's really interesting because a lot of people would think that an organization like yours,

which has a number of brands and a lot of aircraft all poised and ready to go,

would mostly be involved in what I would call ad hoc operations,

for example taking England fans to Germany and back for Euro 2024.

But it's rather different this summer, is that correct?

Yes, you are very right.

So there are two different segments, full chapter,

when companies like us providing services to B2C or via tour operator,

and they fly with their own call signs.

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