The Navy contract has been around for nearly 20 years. In fact, when I was running Flight International Inc. in 1998, Omega (the current refueling contractor) came to me to try to sell refueling services to the Navy because my company had the only “commercial air services” contract within all of DoD. Each US Government contract has a series of “contract line items” or “CLNS”. Some contracts have very few CLNS in order to keep the scope of the contact very narrow and some contracts have dozens of CLNS in order to open up the scope of the contract so that additional money can be added when needed for other requirements. The Flight International Commercial Air Services contract had approximately 46 CLNS which is a significant number. Some of those CLNS allowed for other DoD departments, other US Govt agencies, and foreign governments to purchase flight services through our contract. This is why Omega came to me to try to get the Navy on board with the concept of contractors providing refueling services. In 1999 at the Farnborough Air Show in London, I signed the very first refueling contract with Omega for a 25 hour test program. 25 hours became 50 and 50 became a 100 and so on. In 2018, Omega will fly close to 2,000 hours. The reason that I bring all of this up is that most international customers utilize the Navy refueling contract when they require services. International customer are not “obligated” to use the Navy contract, but it is easy from a contracting standpoint. The problem is that Omega only has two certified aircraft so they can only do so much work. So the Navy contract is really the key element. If we win, the Navy will not be limited to two aircraft because we have four. That means the Navy can take more requests from other customers like NATO members for refueling services. If we lose, then we can focus on cargo and NATO refueling outside of the Navy contract or possibly try to work with Omega to provide additional aircraft. Nothing is guaranteed but there are options that we can pursue.
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