Until around this time last year, European business aviation had been enjoying a boom period, and executive charter in particular had seen some truly explosive growth. It was in the heady years from 2005 to the first half of 2008 that a new generation of air-taxi operator was laying down business plans predicated almost entirely on the quantum leap downward in operating costs offered by the new wave of very light jets (VLJs).
Given that most of the world’s financial gurus were blindsided by the intensity and pace of the global economic collapse, it is understandable these ambitious pioneers apparently failed to envision that their new ventures might end up being launched at the worst possible time in the business cycle. But that is effectively what has happened and there have already been several casualties in Europe’s emerging VLJ air-taxi sector, most notably
Bikkair of the Netherlands. Other operators, such as One Air Taxi in the UK, AccelJet in Iceland and Taxijet in Spain, had their plans rudely interrupted by the
implosion of Eclipse Aviation and the much-vaunted Eclipse 500 jet.
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