There is an oft used mantra in the business world of ‘Grow or Die’, a reference to the idea that any business must grow lest their competitors do and out-compete them to irrelevance. It is an idiom that is bandied about the venture capital and start-up scenes with remarkable regularity. But the private jet industry has a very notable exception to this mantra: Europe.
The European market has been extraordinarily steady over the last 8 years. In fact, the fleet size since 2016 has never varied more than 3% over that time, and as of today, it is within 4 aircraft of the same size it was at the end of 2016.
This isn’t a bad thing – the fleet is the second largest geographic fleet in the world, coming in a distant second to the USA. The European industry is healthy, and companies continue to invest not just in the industry, but also in Europe. This is particularly evident with regards to maintenance and airport facilities, both of which have seen enormous expansions in recent years.
The consistency of the fleet hides the fact that the registrations within the European area have changed enormously. The starkest examples are the UK’s decline of 49%, and Malta’s increase of 74%.
Overall, we are generally seeing a couple of trends occurring. The first is the willingness of owners to move operators within the European area. This is particularly the case with UK based owners, for whom we are seeing a larger number choose to register the aircraft in an EASA member state to take advantage of the easier operations provided by EASA. The second trend is a movement of more people to fractional / branded charter. NetJets and VistaJet now comprise 10% of the European fleet, a testament to their growth and the number of members in each who have opted out of whole ownership. It is a trend we predict to continue for the foreseeable future.
But the contrast to the United States is notable. Over this same period, the USA fleet has grown by 24%. Both the EU and the USA are very wealthy and have grown economically in that time. Both are large areas with numerous airports that should be equally suited to the use of private aircraft. One has grown – the other has not. I can speculate on reasons but there really isn’t a good explanation for it.
As a business operating in Europe, we are happy with its consistency. Clearly, growth would be welcome, but we find that Europe has an extremely stable base of clientele. The one thing better than lots of new clients is lots of repeat clients. And this Europe has in abundance.
Safe Travels.
Oliver Stone
Managing Director
