Corporate Jet & Helicopter Finance Asia 2014: Live Blog – Day One

Welcome to Corporate Jet Investor's Asia conference

Corporate Jet Investor brings you live coverage from International Corporate Jet & Helicopter Finance Asia 2014 in Hong Kong. Please refresh the page for the latest updates.

Welcome to Corporate Jet Investor’s Asia conference.

16:49 Limi Zhu says that Minsheng have already started doing operating leases, as well as financial leases.

16:38 Minsheng says that although they do have helicopters on their books, business jets will remain their main focus. CIB Leasing’s Nana Li, on the other hand, says her company are very interested in helicopters, and will actively try and increase the numbers on their books.

16:29 IBA’s Ben Jacques is moderating a panel on Chinese leasing companies. Minsheng Financial’s Limi Zhu says that she is not seeing China slowing down, in fact she says that Minsheng took delivery of more aircraft in the first half of this year than the same period last year.

15:05 Lowe says that registering a business jet in Taiwan is increasingly attractive for mainland Chinese, and predicts that an more and more aircraft will be added to the Taiwanese register over the coming years.

14:45 Back after lunch, and Jeff Lowe of Asian Sky Group is giving us a run down of the Asian fleet of business jets, and says there are currently 904 in the region.

Lowe says that North East Asia is driving growth, but South East Asia is also worth watching.

12:45 Mike Kahmann of CIT Business Aviation Finance asked the operators panel how many aircraft an aircraft manager need to look after to make a profit. 8-10 is the general feeling.

12:25 Björn Näf, CEO of Metrojet, says that in general, business jets in Asia fly around 150 hours a year.

Näf also states that the top five operators in greater China manage a combined total of 200 aircraft between them.

12:20 Mike Walsh of AsiaJet says his company receives a larger number of enquiries for long range charter flights than shorter range flights.

12:01 Lots of questions from the floor about de-registering aircraft from the Chinese aircraft register. General consensus is that the whole process takes around 90 days.

11:45 Dixon says he went back and looked at home many aircraft in the G550 category were available for sale this time last year, and compared that figure to the number available now.

Last year there 35 Gulfstream G550s available, whereas there are 53 available today. For the competing Global’s there were 50 up for sale last year and 58 today.

11:35 After a well needed coffee break we’re back with another session, this one is examining global demand for large aircraft.

10:15 A really great impassioned speech by David Dixon about changing attitudes towards business aviation in Asia ends with him saying: “We’re a business, not a lifestyle.”

10:00 Charlie Mulaski from Universal Weather and Aviation adds Thailand to the list of places to watch.

09:55 Is it all doom and gloom in Asia? Certainly the panelists aren’t painting a great picture. China seems to be taking a backwards step, but David Dixon from Jetcraft Asia says that Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are the places to watch.

09:45 After a quick opening speech by Corporate Jet Investor’s editor Alasdair Whyte, we’re straight into the first session, titled ‘Is Asia becoming less welcoming to business jets?’

09:40 Welcome to Corporate Jet Investor’s coverage of Corporate Jet & Helicopter Finance Asia 2014, brought to you live from the beautiful Renaissance Harbour View Hotel in Hong Kong.