The Albion Broker Institute has been established to provide professional training in aircraft brokerage, designed by brokers for brokers.
Founded by Lewis King, managing director of Albion Aviation Group, who has over 10 years of aviation industry experience including working for two major chartering companies, it provides training for both the passenger and cargo brokers.
Modules include an introduction to charter brokerage, different types of cargo aircraft, overview of the market and how to carry out a successful cargo charter.
King tells Air Cargo Week that the group spotted the gap in the market as no one was providing cargo charter broker training, and that ABI’s training is designed to establish benchmarks underpinned by ethical and compliant business practices.
He says: “The absence of proper regulation in the cargo charter market has allowed for unfair competition from companies and individuals who conduct their business without regard for what is in the best interest of the customer or the operator. At ABI we want to change this and establish a new industry standard in cargo charter brokerage.”
The service has only been launched very recently but has received positive feedback from freight forwarders, charter brokers and people looking for a career in aircraft brokerage including university students.
King comments: “It has been refreshing to see that people are willing to invest in professional training for aircraft charter brokerage.”
The main cargo clients have been freight forwarders looking to develop in-house brokerage or training existing staff. Shippers and freight forwarders have enquired about using the course as an educational resource.
ABI offers both in-house training and webinars, and King says: “Webinars are proving to be very popular with interest from companies in Europe, Middle East and even as far as Asia. Webinars provide the most cost-effective way of training.”
The training is aimed at educating a younger audience and install industry best practices and a charter code of conduct, as King says they are the future of the charter broker business.
He says: “One day ABI would also like to pioneer establishing regulation in industry to help raise the barriers of entry of becoming a charter broker, as at the moment there is no regulation or barriers of entry.”
