Vietnam pilot project lands €6.5m for Irish recruiter

AT LEAST one Irish company appears to be generating new business in the battered aviation sector.

Direct Personnel, a Swords-based recruitment group, this week signed a contract to supply pilots to Vietnam Airlines, a state-owned company that flies within Asia and to Europe and Australia.

The deal is worth €6.5 million over five years to the low-profile Irish company.

It’s a significant deal for a business that last year earned €11 million in turnover. “This will help open doors to new business in Asia, the Middle East and Eurasia,” managing director Shane Pollard told me this week.

These regions are performing better than Europe and North America, where the aviation sector is going through a rough readjustment.

Direct Personnel has about 150 flight and maintenance crew on secondment to airlines, mostly in Asia. It has contracts with Air China, Korean Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Iceland’s Air Atlanta and Air Astana of Kazakhstan.

Pollard cut his teeth in aviation with Ryanair, working in flight operations. He joined the airline in 1986 and spent 10 years there before entering the recruitment sector and taking on his current role in 2005.

Direct Personnel is a subsidiary of Direct Aviation Group, which is based in the Netherlands and jointly owned by Irishman John Reidy – once of Tony Ryan’s Shannon-based aircraft leasing group GPA – and Mieke Brasse.

Pollard said other contracts are in the pipeline. “We are working on a few [new] contracts,” Pollard added. “There’s still growth in Asia, but how many of them convert into real-life contracts remains to be seen. But we are seeing a small increase in demand.”