Citation, Gulfstream, Learjet. These iconic brands of business aviation - like the sector itself, which took off in the post-war "jet age" of seemingly unbounded economic prosperity - symbolise the American dream. Europe had its modest community of corporate flyers and the 1970s oil crisis created billionaire sheikhs who could customise airliners for private use. But, for half a century after the war, corporate aviation remained a distinctly North American phenomenon.
Then last year a remarkable thing happened. For the first time, more business aircraft were sold outside the USA than within it. An industry with its infrastructure - from factories and completion centres to sales and support networks - rooted in the domestic market had to think internationally. Hence the rush by manufacturers - evident at last week's European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Geneva - to follow those new customers with a flurry of ventures in the Gulf,Indian subcontinent, Russia and South-East Asia.
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Several of the industry's biggest names shunned the first EBACE in 2001. Seven years on, with the event at least three times its original size, anyone with an eye on business aviation's fastest-growing markets ignores it at their peril. From Arabs in traditional dress to Armani-clad Russian oligarchs or air taxi entrepreneurs looking to take on the world, the halls were full of big spenders. The industry was eager to impress.
Ironically, as the USA reels from a credit crunch and rising oil prices, these same economic factors are fuelling the business aviation boom elsewhere, as producers of scarce commodities get richer. The expanding economies are playing catch-up so quickly their entrepreneurial classes have skipped a generation in air travel - the sons of parents who never stepped on an airliner fly corporate jets.
The result has been a switch in business aviation's centre of gravity that may never revert. But can the boom last? Unless there is widespread order cancelling, backlogs will insulate the industry for three years at least. However, this is uncharted territory. A number of new names at the show placed billion dollar-plus orders - underwritten by private finance - on the back of anticipated ad hoc charter demand in emerging markets. If these fledgling operators have got it right, the industry will flourish well into next decade. If they have not, manufacturers will wake with a stinking headache. In the party atmosphere of the Geneva Palexpo few seemed to be preparing for the hangover.
Source: Flight International
