Fits Air is expanding its airline businesses and aiming to enhance its jet fleet network, says Ammar Kassim, Director at FITS Aviation, a unit of Aberdeen Holdings, a Sri Lankan conglomerate with interests in commodities, energy, exports, healthcare, logistics, packaging, technology and more.

In this interview, Ammar tells us how Fits Air became Sri Lanka’s largest private airline and shares plans for the future, including building a specialty coffee brand.

Fits Air began 25 years ago, and today it has established itself as the largest domestic airline in Sri Lanka that focuses on freight. What was challenging about that, and how has the journey been thus far?

Fits Air was founded in 1997, and 25 years later, we have transitioned from a niche airline with a mixed fleet to a regional aviation group with a portfolio across freighters, warehousing, flying training and international cargo.

Fits Air’s airline arm is centred on fleet standardisation to achieve strong unit economics. We are a small, keenly focused team built on pillars of undeviating regulatory compliance structures, and a focus on building and retaining committed teams around the business. We have taken commercial risks with a can-do attitude. The future looks exciting! While our core businesses revolve around air cargo solutions, we have a domestic passenger operation doing charters and our outlook is to develop the passenger business into a scheduled regional network.

How has Covid-19 impacted Fits Air, and how are you navigating the challenging environment in the wake of the pandemic?

The pandemic put the aviation industry under strain across all markets. We were fortunate that we are a very cargo focused operator. We had many challenges early in the outbreak, but fortunately, we overcame those relatively quickly.

We viewed the pandemic supply chain challenges as an opportunity, and Fits Air expanded its network. We were a region-specific airline, mostly flying to India and the Maldives. But today, we have scheduled flights into Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, and Myanmar. We made broad-based enhancements to our network, both online and offline. Our offline business has grown substantially.

We now act as a virtual airline loading cargo on our 90-odd international partner airlines.

What are the factors shaping the future of Fits Air, and what do you envision for the airline? What are your plans for growth?

We rationalised our jet fleet program into the Airbus 320 type in 2020 intending to develop regional freight routes. In fleet strength, we will be flying three Airbus A320 aircraft by the end of this quarter. Going forward, we are working on a program to move into an all freighter fleet for a post-covid world. The first of this type is scheduled for induction in December this year.

We have traditionally had a presence at Ratmalana airport, and it is no secret we hope to launch a regional passenger network out of Ratmalana. The city airport will be our hub for hyper-regional destinations. We anticipate flying climate-friendly, turboprop aeroplanes to short-haul regional destinations. We are modelling the airline to service point-to-point traffic with value pricing.

Fits Air is a part of Aberdeen Holdings. Can you tell us about the other ventures you are involved in?

Fits Air is a part of Aberdeen Holdings, a diversified conglomerate with investments across several categories. I manage a business called Fits Express, the authorised contractor for UPS in Sri Lanka. Fits Express provides international small package courier, freight forwarding, and 3PL (third-party logistics) services.

Another business that excites me is Fits Retail, a coffee solutions company representing several leading coffee machine brands. We have our own coffee roasting plant, and our brand is Damn Fine Coffee, a Sri Lankan speciality coffee brand. There are seeds of a mini-revolution taking hold in this category: the revival of a national heritage industry.

I see it as a race to the top! Whoever can produce the highest quality coffee in Sri Lanka – as opposed to chasing quantity – will win. We are investing in the backward integration of the coffee supply chain with a wet processing mill. Our model is built around the premise of quality coffee, So this is a passionate attempt to build a global Sri Lankan coffee brand. It’s a 10-year play.

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