million. Each of these was a record for these benchmarks. Aircraft leasing Air Europe frequently used day-to-day operating leases as well as finance leases. The former includes long-term swaps of surplus capacity with other airlines whose seasonality was opposite to Air Europe's as well as short-term leases for temporary capacity shortfalls. The latter is an efficient secured finance method to pay for aircraft, whereby these aircraft are sold to related or external lessors from whom they are then leased back, with the airline retaining a substantial interest in the aircraft's residual values. The charter airline business was highly seasonal, with most of the annual commercial activity taking place over a relatively short period of barely four months between the end of May and the beginning of September. As Air Europe was operating a fleet of brand-new aircraft that incurred high financing charges unlike the older, second-hand jets operated by Dan-Air and many other rival airlines, it could not afford to kerb its fleet utilisation over the winter months. Dan-Air, by contrast for example took half of its operational Comet fleet out of service at the end of the 1976 summer season and put the aircraft into storage at Dan-Air Engineering's main base at Lasham Airfield the following winter season and saw reduced use of other aircraft in the winter. Dan-Air was able to do this as these predominantly older, second-hand aircraft had much lower acquisition costs and were already largely or fully depreciated at the time they entered its fleet. Air Europe therefore sought business partners whose seasonality was counter-cyclical to its own so that its surplus aircraft could be leased out to other operators in winter and those operators' surplus capacity could be leased in for the busy summer period. Air Europe agreed an aircraft lease-swap with Air Florida, which commenced at the start of the 1980/81 winter season. Under this deal, Air Europe leased three of its aircraft to Air Florida to cover that airline's peak season, which occurred in winter. In return, Air Florida leased two of its aircraft to Air Europe to cover the UK airline's summer peak period. The number of aircraft Air Europe leased from Air Florida during the summer months subsequently increased to three. Although this arrangement initially worked to both airlines' satisfaction, Air Europe decided to terminate it at the end of the 1982/83 winter season due to Air Florida's growing financial