Whether it’s entirely the fault of the economic crisis we may never know, but we can be sure the anticipated very-light-jet (VLJ) revolution never happened and there is little sign it will happen any time soon. All the evidence from the fourth annual Light Jets Europe conference, held at the UK’s Oxford Airport in late September, is that insofar as the so-called game-changers are a phenomenon at all, they have blended politely into the aircraft mix while they wait for improved market conditions that might see them fulfill some of their potential to draw new customers into business aviation.
As recently as May 2008, Eurocontrol was predicting that by 2010 some European operators would have orders for some 500 VLJs and no fewer than 300 would be in service–the implication being that the air traffic management infrastructure might not be able to cope with the swarms. Now the air traffic management agency is indicating that the airways will be able to cope just fine with the far fewer numbers of VLJs that are actually arriving in Europe. Speaking at the conference, which was attended by just over 100 people, Alex Hendriks, principal advisor to Eurocontrol’s air traffic management director, did predict that VLJs could yet deliver a way for operators to circumvent anticipated capacity shortfall because they can access underused smaller airports.
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