The post-Covid spike in European business aviation activity appears to be winding down to more normal levels, Richard Koe, managing director of industry data analyst WingX Advance, told AIN this week at EBACE 2023. "Clearly, during the lockdown people had excess savings and the need to get out from a lockdown. The surge we saw in business aviation demand during the entire pandemic—which really came through in Europe from mid-2021—we've seen the air come out of that to a large extent."

Koe noted year-to-date declines in the region versus 2022. “That doesn’t mean we are behind [pre-Covid] 2019," he added. "We’re still up 5 percent in terms of business jet sectors flown this year versus the same period in 2019.” 

He pointed out that the compound annual growth rate for Europe is “not particularly impressive, and it's weaker than in the U.S.” And with protests roiling the EBACE show on opening day, Koe added, “The environmental factor in Europe is certainly having a larger impact than in the U.S. It’s much more sensitive here.”

Koe explained that airline connections in Europe have still not rebounded from pre-pandemic levels and a study by the company revealed that within that network of connections that have been lost, business aviation has filled that gap. “There are these changes that have taken place and some of them are permanent or semi-permanent and should give the business aviation sector some momentum for years to come.”

For the remainder of the year, WingX predicts, traffic levels will be on par with those of 2021. “When we speak to operators and when we talk to partners like Avinode, we can see in the bookings that there is a strong summer coming,” said Koe. “We’ve still got a lot of U.S. travelers coming over, we’ve got a lot of international travel.”