Fleet Care Program at Marseille Provence (LFML)

What changes at Marseille Provence for a recurring detailing program?

Marseille Provence sits at 70 feet elevation, 27 kilometres north-west of Marseille city centre at Marignane, with two runways: 13L/31R at 3,500 metres and 13R/31L at 2,370 metres. The airport operates H24 with no closure or slot curfew—administration, customs and immigration, ATS, fuelling, handling and de-icing all run around the clock. COHOR classifies MRS as Level 1, meaning no slots are required, so you can position aircraft for scheduled detailing without coordination delays.

Jetex Marseille operates the Terminal Aviation Générale on Route de l'aviation générale, staffed 24/7 on VHF 131.460. Handling is mandatory at LFML: the AIP requires you to contact the handling agent before departure from your origin aerodrome, and all airside access for detailing crews goes through the handler. Customs and immigration are H24 and cleared at the FBO, making MRS a straightforward airport of entry for international fleets. For a recurring program, this means predictable ramp access, consistent handler coordination, and no seasonal closure windows to work around.

How does a twelve-month service calendar work at this base?

When you enrol a tail number in the Fleet Care Program, we build a service calendar around your actual flight schedule. If your aircraft turns every Monday and Thursday, we slot quick exterior dry washes into those turnarounds. Monthly interior deep-cleans happen during longer ground periods—maintenance visits, crew rest days, or seasonal lulls. Seasonal exterior work—two-stage polish in spring, decon and reseal before summer, leading-edge and nacelle inspection in autumn—goes onto the calendar at the start of the contract, then adjusts as your ops tempo changes.

You receive a single fixed invoice each month covering all scheduled work for that tail number, regardless of how many quick turns or whether we moved a cabin session forward by a week. The program includes a quarterly appearance review with your operations team: we walk through service history, flag any recurring issues—scuff marks on the cheat line, galley spills, belly staining—and adjust the calendar if your route network or utilisation shifts. The goal is to remove the admin overhead of booking each visit separately while keeping the aircraft consistently presentable.

What does priority crew allocation mean for AOG requests?

Fleet Care Program clients receive priority crew allocation and 24/7 AOG cover. If your aircraft goes tech at another field and you need a cabin refresh or exterior touch-up before the next charter leg, we pull a crew from the roster ahead of one-off bookings. At Marseille, where Jetex is staffed around the clock, this means we can coordinate handler access and airside escort even during night hours, though we always confirm GPU availability and apron lighting with the handler before committing to a start time.

AOG cover does not mean unlimited free work—it means you jump the queue. If a Fleet Care aircraft needs an unscheduled dry wash because a client complained about dust on the winglets, we mobilise within the response window agreed in your contract, typically four hours airside at LFML during the day, longer at night depending on handler staffing. The fixed monthly budget absorbs a small number of these callouts; larger unscheduled jobs—say, a full decon after a bird strike—are billed separately but still get priority crew access.

How do we handle documentation and photo reports for each visit?

Every service visit generates a dated entry in your fleet history: what was done, products used, any defects noted, and a timestamped photo set. For a quick turn, that might be four images—nose, tail, both sides—showing the aircraft clean on stand. For a monthly cabin session, expect ten to fifteen shots: galley, lav, each seating zone, cockpit if we went forward of the curtain, close-ups of any wear or damage we flagged. Exterior polish sessions produce before-and-after pairs of the same panel so you can see the correction.

We upload everything to a shared folder within 24 hours of the crew leaving the ramp. Some clients forward the photos straight to their owner or charter broker; others use them for insurance documentation or pre-purchase records if they're rotating aircraft in and out of the fleet. The service history also helps us: if we see the same galley scuff appearing every month, we know it's a usage pattern, not a cleaning failure, and we can adjust our process or recommend an OEM material refresh during the next heavy maintenance visit.

What does the handler expect when a third-party detailing crew is on the apron?

Because handling is mandatory at Marseille Provence, every detailing visit begins with coordination through Jetex. We notify them of the crew size, vehicle count, equipment list and estimated duration, typically 48 hours before the aircraft arrives or before we mobilise to a based tail. The handler issues airside passes and provides escort if required, arranges GPU if the aircraft will be on external power during the session, and confirms stand assignment so we know whether we'll have wing clearance for a scissor lift.

On the ramp, the handler expects us to follow their safety brief, stay within the marked stand boundary, and avoid any contact with avionics bays, pitot tubes or static ports—standard no-touch rules. If we're doing a cabin session, they want confirmation that we've logged our entry and exit times in the tech log or handler's visit sheet. For a Fleet Care Program aircraft, this process becomes routine: the same handler contact, the same safety brief, the same stand if the aircraft is based long-term. That familiarity reduces friction and speeds up access, especially for quick turns between legs.

Why choose a fixed monthly budget over pay-per-visit billing?

A fixed monthly budget smooths cash flow and removes the surprise of a large invoice after a seasonal exterior campaign. You know in January what you'll pay in July. For a charter operator running two or three tails out of Marseille, that predictability matters when you're forecasting departmental costs or explaining appearance spend to an owner. The budget is set per tail number based on the agreed service calendar: if you want two quick turns and one cabin session per month, we price that; if you want monthly exteriors and quarterly brightwork, we price that instead.

The trade-off is commitment: Fleet Care is a twelve-month program, renewable but not cancellable month-to-month. If your utilisation drops and you fly less than planned, you still pay the fixed amount, though we'll offer to bank unused sessions for a deeper detail later in the year. If utilisation spikes and you need extra visits, we bill those separately at a pre-agreed rate, lower than our walk-up pricing because you're already a program client. The model works best for operators with stable, recurring schedules—regular charter routes, corporate shuttles, or FBO-managed fleets that turn predictably.