If journalism is the first draft of history, the front pages of Aviation International News over the last two years serve to chronicle the forces that have darkened business aviation’s sky for the past two years. It has been a rough flight, riding a spectacular updraft until encountering a brutal shear 18 months ago and fighting a severe downdraft since. Despite some breaks in the weather recently, the business jet is by no means in the clear yet.
It’s well known that business aviation’s fortunes are elastically hitched to the ebb and flow of the economy, lagging them by a year or so, and the last down cycle was triggered by the chaos and angst that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Aviation, both commercial and business, felt this event hard because airliners had been commandeered as the weapon, and the process of beefing up security to prevent a repeat is still under way nearly 10 years later.
