Around the time of the last Dubai Airshow in November 2007, the prospect of getting into the Middle East’s burgeoning business aviation market must have seemed like a license to print money. Even though financial storm clouds had already gathered over North America at that point and seemed very likely to cross the Atlantic to Europe, the consensus in this part of the world seemed to be that the business-aviation party had only just started and nothing was going to stop it.
Two years on, it has become clear that the Middle East was not immune to the fallout from the global financial crisis and this has undoubtedly impinged on the region’s extraordinary growth rates. But it has by no means smothered business aviation growth in the region, even though it has resulted in this happening at a more measured pace, according to business aviation companies interviewed ahead of the show by AIN.
