Specialist Aviation Services “SAS”, the British operator better known for its subsidiaries Police Aviation Services and Medical Aviation Services, has two new directors.  Following our report on 7th July of a change in ownership (see here), we can now advise that they have added two directors as well.  Previously we noted that we had an industry source telling us that the new owner was the brother of the previous owner Joep van den Nieuwhuijzen – and indeed 53 year old Jeroen van den Nieuwhuijzen is one of the new directors, a Dutchman living in Belgium.

The second director is 64 year old Tom Piron of Helifly in Belgium.  Mr Piron was invovled with Joep van den Nieuwhuijzenin in the 1999 buyout of MD Helicopters when Boeing kept the pure military lines and sold the mainly civilian types – MD500E, MD520N, MD530F, MD600N and MD Explorer.  Boeing kept the Apache, the share of the Osprey with Bell, and the press reports at the time noted that they also retained the rights to the NOTAR technology.

Despite the UK legal requirement to file notice of change of Directors within 14 days of the board meeting approving the appointment, SAS managed to take six and a half months to file these documents.  HeliHub.com wonders if our enquiries as to change of ownership on 7th July jogged some memories and led to the documents being sent – Companies House received them on the 16th July despite being effective from 1st January 2011.

One curious aspect of all this – Mr Piron is no stranger to SAS, having also been a Director up to 22nd October 2010.  Why would he have not been a director for a mere 39 days and then ger reappointed on 1st January?

These changes leave the SAS board comprising of

• UK-based Finance Director Jim Webster, the only director based in the same country as the company’s main operations
• two with Arizona addresses – Henk Schaeken and Richard Cobbold (President of Flight Trails Helicopters)
• two new Belgian residents as noted above.

Mr Cobbold has recently ceased to be a director of the two SAS subsidiaries Police Aviation Services and Medical Aviation Services.