Women in ‘engine room’ of Ludgate’s high-flying aircraft leasing company

WHEN it comes to the high-flying world of aircraft leasing and operations, lovely Skibbereen might not be the first global location you’d consider.

However, the West Cork town is, in fact, home to a company that is not only a major player in the jet-fuelled world of aircraft operations, but the all-female team at Six West Services constitute ‘the engine room for the company’, so said Six West founder and former pilot for the Jordanian Royal family, and Skibbereen resident Jason Williamson.

‘We didn’t set out, by design, to employ only women at our Skibbereen office,’ Jason told The Southern Star.

‘We want the best people for the job and the best turned out to be women. We wanted experience, talent, hard work, and a lot drive and ambition, traits that the crew at Six West Services in Skibbereen have in abundance.’

Six West Services provides world-leading support and flight operations services to aircraft lessors, airlines and private aviation from their offices in Dublin, Hong Kong, Malta, the Cayman Islands and, of course in Skibbereen, based at the Ludgate hub.

‘When we started the business Skibbereen played a very important part,’ Jason said.

‘We needed financial services assistance and we knew Áine Scully, who is now our finance director, and asked her to do about five hours a week. Then within a year Áine was full-time and had three people working with her.’

‘The face of Six West is up in Dublin but really Skibbereen has become the engine room, controlling finance, administration, HR and travel logistics. And we also set up, last year, a corporate travels service, Aquilo Travel, which is also based here at the Ludgate.’

The Ludgate hub has also provided Jason, his wife Claire and the team the ability to work and grow this global company within their own community.

‘Ludgate has been great. The infrastructure, the space, the conference facilities all work extremely well for us,’ Jason said.

‘We started with a hot desk and now we have our own office space. We like the fact that we know the community and the people who work here and we are all happy here at home in Skibbereen.’

The team at Six West were also recognised with a well-deserved ‘Most Innovative Business Award’ at the Southern Star’s annual West Cork Business and Tourism Awards’ ceremony recently.

‘Our team here in Skibbereen will expand as the business grows,’ Jason said.

‘And we are already talking about more space at Ludgate Two, as we plan to become the global go-to for flight solutions for the aircraft industry.’

‘We are looking to attract more skilled talent down here to West Cork to work at Six West in Skibbereen. We would be very interested to hear from people with an aviation background who would like to live and work Skibbereen and West Cork.’

If you know anyone who might be like to work with Six West in Skibbereen, log on to Sixwestservices.com.