On Tour at EBACE

Friday 1st of June 2007

 

Alison Chambers reports from this year’s EBACE business aviation show in sunny Geneva.

 

Mediterranean weather, a wide selection of the latest fancy hardware, including the distinctive ‘Javelin’ Personal Jet, Dassault’s new 700X and the Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet (VLJ) marking its international debut, drew a record 10,000 annual visitors by the second day of Europe’s premier business aviation show EBACE 2007 at Palexpo, Geneva last week.

 

The exhibition’s close access to the static display, this year home to some 50-plus business aircraft makes EBACE a hit with visitors. The host Swiss city is well located for visitors from the Middle East, Russia and Asia, who come to Geneva in preference to the much larger US NBAA. Confidence in the venue is so secure that it will stay in Geneva through to at least 2012. This year, 1,410 booth spaces were taken up by more than 340 exhibitors.

 

The buoyancy of the business aviation market has seen the dominant players Gulfstream, Bombardier, Cessna, Dassault and newly named Hawker Beechcraft, joined by a whole new cast of players with smaller jets – among them Eclipse Aviation, Adam Aircraft, Grob Aerospace, Honda (HondaJet), Diamond Aircraft and Embraer with its new  Phenom family.

 

“The VLJ air taxis, with an entry level price tag of $1.52 million, will radically change the landscape of the charter market,” opined Gregg Thomas, CEO of PrivatAir. He singled out the advanced plans of JetBird, headed by ex RBS Head of Asset Finance Domhnal Slattery. JetBird aims to operate 100 Embraer Phenoms from spring 2009, from an initial two European hubs, not yet disclosed.

 

PrivatAir, which started out as the corporate jet fleet of the Latsis Group, celebrated its 30th anniversary at EBACE. Today, managing a fleet of 40 aircraft from a King Air 200 to a B757, it would certainly be open to managing a fleet of VLJs, he said.

 

But amid this boom in the non-US marketplace, home to a 2,800-strong European aircraft fleet, access is becoming a problem, acknowledged European Business Aviation Association CEO Brian Humphries. He highlighted the situation at now slot-controlled London Luton Airport and Geneva, which has been especially impacted by low cost carrier growth. Private aircraft are also feeling the pressure at airports which have hitherto been kept viable by private jet users.

 

Humphries advocates that private aviation too should have grandfather rights, just like commercial, scheduled operators. “If we hold 20% of an airport’s slots, then we too should have rights,” he challenges (referring to London Luton).  Enforced carbon trading for aircraft weighing more than 5,700kg, new security rules and concerns over airlines muscling business jets out of European skies are other major areas of concern.

 

Keynote speaker at EBACE, celebrated aviator Dr Bertrand Piccard, highlighted the ‘green concern’ concerning business aviation, and challenged that the industry needs to realise it must find a renewable source of energy for flight – which is likely to be biofuel, rather than solar power.

 

Piccard, a medical doctor, is the architect of the Solar Impulse Project, its mission to fly around the world in a solar-powered aircraft. The prototype will be ready by summer 2008, ready for first flight in 2009. It would gain altitude in the day and descend at night taking power from lithium batteries, he said.

 

If solar power is the long term future, at EBACE, just as in the regional airline business, turboprops are firmly back in vogue – as testified by the announcements and orders last week.

 

Europe’s first fractional ownership company Jetfly of Luxembourg, announced an order for four Piaggio Avanti IIs, for delivery in 2008, to complement its expanding fleet of single turboprop EADS-Socata TBM 700s and Pilatus PC-12s. JetFly also announced a partnership with luxury travel provider Avolus, which will see the latter offer fractional ownership shares on the single turboprops in the UK and Ireland. Beechcraft Hawker announced two new enhanced King Air variants, its GTI and GT marques, offering enhanced performance and higher climb, while RUAG of Germany disclosed plans to restart production of the Dornier 228, for special mission use.

 

As usual, EBACE 2007 brought a flurry of new order announcements. Airbus secured five A318 Elites from US Group Petters Worldwide. NetJets Europe CEO Mark Booth announced 32 more Hawker 4000 entry level jets, worth about $700 million. (NetJets Europe has just taken on 100 additional pilots, with a further 125 joining by year end. In four years’ time it plans to double its flightdeck crew to 1,500).

 

Eclipse CEO, Vern Raburn, scooped the largest European order to date for the Eclipse 500, heralding a 180-strong order from ETRIC Aviation of Luxembourg. ETRIC has entered into a JV with Turkey-based Atasay to start an air taxi service in the country. Gloucester, UK-based European Skytime adds one 40XR and 45XR Series; Bahrain’s Bexair ordered a Challenger 605; Omni Aviacao a Challenger 300 and Echo of Lebanon, a  Global Express XRS.

 

An order for up to 20 Gulfstream G450s was announced by National Air Services to operate in the Middle East, while ExecuJet, the worldwide sales distributor for the Grob Aerospace Spn announced two customers from Abu Dhabi - Prestige Jets and Falcon Aviation Services. “The Spn is going to be a significant game changer in the Middle East,” stated FAS General Manager Philip Markham.