Ultimate Jet #73 - Phenom 300E Flight Test

Emergency Services
At least so far in the evolution of this crisis, business aviation has been
the last of the aviation sectors to get hit by the crisis, and appears
to be the first one coming out. As government lockdowns escalated
in Europe and North America in early March, business aviation
activity surged in response for pent-up demand for repatriation. With
travel locked down, many operators did then park their fleets, with
some smaller airports closing, aircraft owners hangaring their jets,
and many operators needing to furlough crews. But at least 30%
of business aviation operators stayed operational, deploying their
fleets to ongoing emergency services, whether ambulance, cargo or
logistics. At the aggregate level, at the peak of the crisis in April, 70%
declines in year-on-year bizav flights in April was still livelier than the
near-flatline reduction in commercial aviation. By May, we are seeing
recovery in busness aviation to half normal levels.
By region, the changes in business aviation flight activity have
broadly reflected the pandemic both in terms of timing and impact.
The crisis phase in Asia, back in February, saw a standstill in flight
activity in China, a big slowdown in intra-Asian activity, but resilience
and even increase in some international travel, with the larger
domestic markets in Europe and North America barely affected.
From the second half of March through to the end of April we saw
business aviation slow to its lowest ebb in Europe, rippling across to
the US. There was little recovery in Asia, save Oceania, where viruscontainment
in Australian and New Zealand has been successful.
Then through May we’ve seen quite quick recovery from the trough in
North America, slower pick-up in Europe and Africa. We’ve also seen
some slowdown in South America, but not as abrupt as elsewhere.
Quarantine impact
Underlying the regional differences, there have been
strong variations in flight activity from country to
country, as shown in Chart 3 below. Broadly speaking, the
more relaxed the suppression policy, the more resilient
business aviation activity (the same does not apply to
commercial aviation, which appears to have been much
more exposed to regional travel suppression). In Sweden,
where suppression has been controversially loose, flight
activity has dipped no more than 25%. In Germany, where
containment has allowed suppression to be loosened fairly
quickly, activity is at 50%. In Italy, UK, France and Spain,
where the public health impact was most severe, and
lockdown prolonged, business aviation flight activity is still
60%-70% below normal. Over in the US, flight activity has
been fairly resilient in Texas, Arizona and Florida, which
have endured milder travel restrictions than California and
most of the East Coast states.
Ultimate Jet I 41