Ireland-based ASL Aviation Group has announced it will launch a new European airline brand, ASL Airlines, as part of its ‘Platform for Growth’ strategy which aims to enhance the Group's role in various express integrator, passenger, and postal markets in Europe.

The announcement comes after ASL Aviation Group completed its acquisition of Swiss-based Farnair Group in December last year which, in addition to Farnair Switzerland and Farnair Hungary, also brought India's Quikjet Airlines (QO, Bangalore International) as well as a 45% stake in Thailand's K-Mile Asia (8K, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi) under ASL's control.

As such, the ASL Group is being restructured into two divisions - European Airlines and Rest of the World Airlines and Leasing. ASL said its four European airlines - Air Contractors (Dublin International), Europe Airpost (Paris CDG), Farnair Switzerland (Basel/Mulhouse/Freiburg, CH), and Farnair Hungary (Budapest) - would be renamed ASL Airlines Ireland (ABR, Dublin International), ASL Airlines France (5O, Paris CDG), ASL Airlines Switzerland (Basel/Mulhouse/Freiburg, CH), and ASL Airlines Hungary (FAH, Budapest) respectively. In addition, each subsidiary will become a Centre of Excellence alongside ASL's South African unit, Safair (FA, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo), which will focus on the African market.

“Our intent is to have a new strong single brand that will play a major role in helping us to achieve our vision and mission and reflect our corporate values in our business,” ASL Group Chief Executive, Hugh Flynn, said. “This strong single brand will make it considerably easier to use the aircraft of the European fleet across the individual countries to meet customer demand and this increased fleet flexibility and consequent competitiveness will enable us to grow our business.”

The four European carriers currently operate throughout Europe providing capacity to express freight integrators and to the French and British postal services from hubs in France and Germany. They maintain additional bases throughout Europe ranging from Norway to Greece.

Of the Group's approximately 100 aircraft, some will be painted in airline customer colours while the rest will be repainted in the new ASL Airlines livery.