Business jet operators stress the need for more co-operation

Business jet operators stressed a need for more co-operation throughout the industry at the first Operator Consolidation Conference held on 5 December 2012 in London.

There was a general agreement at the conference organised by MIU Events that there was not enough business to sustain operators over the coming year, but a mixed response as to how a merger or consolidation would work.

“Consolidation is a painful process,” said Will Curtis, CEO of Perfect Aviation. “I think there are other ways of cooperating which would be less painful, like the co-buying of fuel, pre-training, insurance or even pilots. If we work together, I think we could take 15-20% out of our overhead costs.”

Aoife O’Sullivan, partner at Gates & Partners, also noted that there really ever such thing as a true merger. “99.9% of the time in a merger, it is one company taking over another,” she said. “If it was a true merger it would not happen because there would be egos in the room.”

Over 50 operators, charter brokers and professionals from the business aviation industry attended the event, which was held to gauge whether there was any appetite for operators to merge or consolidate at a time when customers are dwindling. There were also presentations and panel appearances throughout the day from Stratajet, Oxygen Aviation, Blink, GlobeAir and more.

Alan Perry, MIU Events Chairman, said: “The fact that we have had so many operators in the room today and the nature of the dialogue suggests that operators are now seriously looking at co-operating – if not in terms of an actual merger, there is an opportunity for operators to pool resources such as dispatch, fuel purchase, engineering expertise, compliance issues and training.”