September 29 - Air Charter Service, a leading aircraft charter specialist, continues its global expansion as it opens the cargo department of its second US office in Los Angeles - to complement its established operation in New York.

The company already handles many charters on the west coast, and felt that a presence in California was essential to further growth.

Tony Bauckham (pictured below), managing director of ACS, commented: "Our New York office is our most established outer operation and had its best ever year in 2010. We have been planning on opening an office here in LA for some time now. A team of experienced ACS brokers transferred from or established operations will be supported by local staff trained over the last six months in our London and New York offices. I am delighted to see our plans finally come to fruition - California has the 8th largest economy in the world and has an extremely large charter market. We already deal with many clients on the west coast on a regular basis, and I'm sure that the team will build an even larger client base now that the office has opened."

Bauckham added: "As with all of our offices this is a significant set-up with a firm infrastructure, bringing in both internal ACS transfers and hiring experienced staff locally. We do not believe in hiring people to work from home and listing it as one of our offices, as some companies do. We believe that this doesn't offer sufficient backup - one person cannot support the round-the-clock operations and high service levels that we offer our clients."

Air Charter Service now has fourteen offices across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the CIS, the Middle East and Asia and arranges almost 6,000 charters a year.