the moment the keys were handed over.
Humphries recollects talking to an aircraft
broker who sold an aircraft in 2007 for $42
million and bought it back for $24 million
in 2009.
Nobody would have wished such a
dramatic and painful downturn on the
industry, but it has had some benefi cial
eff ects. It has brought sanity back to the
market and prices – for aircraft at least –
have now bottomed out. So much so that
there are some types that you can’t even
give away. The result is that the Business
Aviation community can now go about the
task of returning the sector to growth in a
much more realistic environment.
But to do so, business models will have
to be convincing and realistic. It does seem,
BUSINESS AVIATION NEEDS businessmen
– and lots of them. In particular, it needs the
type of thrusting entrepreneur who doesn’t
think twice about hiring a plane to make a
lunchtime meeting in Moscow after breakfasting
in Paris. So when the world banking
system almost self-destructed and hordes
of these men and women suddenly found
themselves standing outside their former
offi ces holding cardboard boxes full of their
belongings, the future for Business Aviation
was obviously not going to be good – at
least in the short term.
Brian Humphries, president of the European
Business Aviation Association (EBAA)
religiously checks the monthly traffi c statistics
he gets from EUROCONTROL to see
how things are going. “One month it is up
and then the next it is down,” he concedes.
Although Business Aviation has been hit
hard, it has not suff ered quite as much as the
scheduled carriers and overall, Humphries
predicts, once all the fi gures are in, the
market for this most chic form of travel will
have dropped 15 per cent over 2009. “You
have got to put this in perspective, though,”
says Humphries. By this he means that
before the bubble burst, Business Aviation
had experienced an incredible period of
growth between 2001 and 2007. In a way,
the market had begun to run away with
itself and was no longer off ering everyone
value for money.
People were beginning to speculate on
aircraft, much like oil traders who buy and
sell without any intention of ever using
the goods they trade. Premiums on aircraft
were high – sometimes as much as $10 million
– meaning that quite a few orders were
placed with the sole intention of selling on
In the wake of a dramatic downturn in business, Brian Humphries,
president of the European Business Aircraft Association, tells
Simon Michell what the future holds for growth in this dynamic sector
Boom in business
aircraft traffic
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本文链接地址：Reaching for the Single European Sky(90)
