Corporate Jet Investor London 2015 Live Blog: Day One

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Corporate Jet Investor London 2015 runs throughout today and tomorrow at the Royal Garden Hotel in leafy Kensington, with Helicopter Investor London 2015 running immediately after.

Today, the stage will be graced by speakers from Bombardier, Cessna, Gulfstream, Global Jet Capital, London Executive Aviation, Luxaviation, Private Fly, Avinode and many more.

Make you keep refreshing the page to receive updates from the event. Remember that you can also interact with us on Twitter and Facebook.

Live news

18.05 Alasdair has announced that proceedings will be swiftly moved onto to the cocktail session. Some thirsty delegates – who will remain to nameless – could actually be heard cheering. Apologies to anyone who wanted to hear the rest of Bissett’s speech. We’ll be back tomorrow with highlights from day two. Over and out.

18.00 Well, this is a first for a Corporate Jet Investor event. Mark Bissett’s speech was cut short by a fire alarm at the Royal Garden Hotel causing 300 business aviation to spill out onto Kensington High Street and shuffle about impatiently in the cold.

17.05 63% of delegates say the Russia/Ukraine crisis has affected their business.

16.55 Twidell says US bookings now account for 20% of business since launching stateside operations a year ago.

16.40 Margetson-Rushmore: “I’m never sure whether Avinode is the angel or the devil. One might think the fee they charge are too high, but having said that, well over 55 per cent of our business originates from Avinode.”

16.35 How would you describe the charter market in one word?

Phillipe Fragniere, Exclusive Aviation Services: “Stable”
Patrick Margetson-Rushmore, London Executive Aviation: “Fluctuating”
Adam Twidell, PrivateFly: “Average”
Tony Coe, Baltic Air Charter Assocation: “Spongy”
Niklas Berg, Avinode: “Like last year”

Clearly, not all members of the panel understood the question.

16.00 The afternoon coffee break was made considerably better by Aviation Finance Company’s delicious cupcakes. As you can see below, they didn’t last long…

cake-1 cake-2

14.40 This is our biggest event yet, the conference hall has been packed all day.

Please excuse the grainy photo:

Corporate Jet Investor London 2015

12.30 82% of delegates would recommend buyers to use an aircraft broker and/or advisor. Only 17% of delegates say that aircraft prices will rise in 2015.

12.20 A controversial opinion from Varsano: business jet buyers have too much choice, but there is still not enough innovation from manufacturers.

12.05 Varsano says over 200 business jet models have even been produced and around 140 models are still trading today.

11.55 Steve Varsano, founder of The Jet Business, says “the past 12 months have been incredibly better for us.”

11.35 61% of delegates say the operating lessor model will be succesful in business aviation.

11.30 Global Jet Capital’s Shawn Vick makes a strong case for financing business jets: in short, you’re better off investing your cash in something that can bring a significant return rather than spending it on an aircraft.

11.05 Can we get “cautiously optimistic” trending on Twitter?

https://twitter.com/ZUVINLAW/status/564733979677691905

10.15 Only 1% of delegates think that the majority of business jet growth will come from Europe in 2015.

10.10 It seems that most of our delegates are prefering to e-mail their questions for the speakers anonymously to Corporate Jet Investor’s editor and panel moderator Alasdair Whyte rather than braving the microphone.

10.00 After some technical difficulties, our interactive voting feature is proving very popular again this year. Thanks to 28 East Group for sharing this vote on Twitter:

09.15 Corporate Jet Investor London 2015 kicked off with a joke about the likely buzzwords for this year’s conference: “cautiously optimistic,” “bifurcation” and “double-dip recession” were all favourites.

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