IF THE EUROPEAN BUSINESS Aircraft Association (EBAA) is to be believed, over-regulation, over-pricing and over-restriction are placing European business aviation in jeopardy, to the point of threatening the very existence of many operators. It is true that there are looming threats to the business community's continued hassle-free use of its aircraft, but the biggest danger is from complacency and a lack of conviction within.
Some operators have identified likely causes, and possible solutions, for this sad state. The business-aircraft population is dropping (by 18% in one year), business aviation has a low profile with European politicians and regulators and users have a "desperate" need for better representation, the operators say.
Perhaps they're all missing something. Yes, the population has dropped, but the biggest cause of the decline is probably not the imposition of legislation, or restrictions on access to major airports, or even a lack of understanding in Brussels. Two-thirds of the decline in the European figure in 1995, was accounted for by a 30% drop in the French fleet, almost certainly caused by severe difficulties in the French economy. Take out those exceptional figures, and the actual decline of the European business-aircraft population was 4.5%.
Those declines had little to do with legislative or regulatory meddling, and probably very little to do with restricted access to major airports. Neither the Joint Airworthiness Authorities nor the European Union introduced any major new restrictions or regulations affecting business aircraft in 1995. Yes, they proposed some new regulations and restrictions, but, that year, nobody had to fit a new 8.33kHz-split radio in place of a 25kHz-split unit, or fit a traffic-collision-avoidance system, or replace an instrument-landing system with a microwave-landing system (MLS) or global-positioning system, or conform to extended-range twin-engined-operations rules. Even the threat of one or all of those impositions probably had little or no influence on the decisions of 247 European operators to stop being operators in that year: straight economic factors probably did.
The fact, that economic factors persuaded those operators to make those decisions, says less about the power of the regulators, than it does about the weakness of the operators. For some, especially those who exist primarily by renting out aircraft to others, the decision could be made for them, by their customers making less use of aircraft. For owners, the decision to sell could be the result of a need to reduce expenditure. It is those operators, in failing to convince their bankers, workers or their own boards of directors that a business aircraft is a vital and productive business tool, which have failed the business-aircraft community.
Far from lacking representation, European business-aircraft users have had plenty of it, from national associations such as the UK's General Aviation Manufacturers and Traders Association through to the International Business Aviation Council. They have even benefited from the efforts of the National Business Aircraft Association, based in the USA, but whose "No Plane, No Gain" campaign has been spread across the globe.
Despite those efforts, it has still proved all too easy for a management strapped for cash and hassled by hostile unions to treat the company aircraft as an indulgence which can be disposed of as soon as times are hard. It is easy in Europe, because alternative means of transport are readily available. It is also easy in Europe, because the business aircraft is so invisible: it is unidentified, unbranded, unliveried and even in the good times, it is hidden away and used covertly.
A business aircraft is an integral, productive, part of a company's communications system, just like its telephones and computers. If a company decides to do without any of these tools, no representation from a trade association to government or regulator will get it back, or earn its previous owner special favour.
If the European business-aircraft community is to prosper, all of its members will have to take up the fight, by using their aircraft openly, sensibly and to the full. Only then will they earn the right to be heard as a lobby to influence what they rightly see as unjustified impositions on the use of their aircraft.
Source: Flight International
