Bright spots in Europe

opinion

by Alasdair Whyte

June 16, 2025

Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump, bump, bump.

This is the sound of a ball hitting the ground and coming to rest. It is also what has happened with business jet traffic in Europe. After the post-lockdown bounce, WINGX says European flights are up just 3% so far this year compared with 2019. Down 0.7% on 2024.

If this continues, Europe is set to lose its status as the second largest business jet market to Latin America. Europe is growing much more slowly than the Middle East, Asia and the dominant North American market.

When you look at new initiatives, like the French Air Passenger Duty on business jet flights (€420 per passenger on a domestic flights) or protests, it is easy to write off the continent.

But it is a mistake to get too depressed. First, there are still a lot of new aircraft being sold to European buyers. OEMs are replacing many aircraft and finding new buyers, even if a lot of pre-owned aircraft have left. Fractional operators are seeing strong demand.

To paraphrase Dolly Parton, there are islands in the stream of negative sentiment, where governments want to grow business jet fleets. Malta is one. It wants business jet operators to move there and apply for air operator certificates (AOCs).

The country has a lot of advantages including attractive tax breaks for operators, double-tax treaties, civil aircraft law, English regulations and a regulator that wants to grow its business aviation industry.

“If you look at the way some civil aviation associations operate, they’re not really interested in smaller AOCs. We see countries who, if you go to them and say, ‘I want a small AOC for four or five business jets’ they just don’t care,” said Charles Pace ,director general for civil aviation at Transport Malta, speaking at our CJI Malta conference this week.

“Malta being who we are, we’re small. We need small businesses. We’re interested in an AOC with three aircraft. It provides jobs. That’s the sole feature the government has asked us to do, provide jobs.”

It has worked. Malta now has more than 50 AOCs – a mix of business jet operators, ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance) providers and airlines, including Ryanair.

Comlux was the first business jet operator when it moved there in 2007. “At first, we ran it together in parallel with our historical AOC. At the end, we closed the AOC in 2011 and we brought the whole fleet to Malta,” says Andrea Zanetto, CEO, Comlux. “We did not ever regret it. It was a simple combination of finding a place where we could run the business faster.”

Other operators including Flightwatch, Hans Jet, JetHouse, Gestair, Gama Aviation and Skyfirst all praised Malta as a base.

“One of the values that I think we all experience about operating in Malta is our proximity to our regulator. The ability to communicate, and explain, for them to see first-hand,” said one operator. “The good thing about Transport Malta is that they stick to the rules, unlike, I may say, other regulators who actually invent new rules, which are contradictory to the rules in question.”

However, the growth has caused problems. The Maltese fleet has now risen to more than 900 aircraft and finding good people is difficult. There is a lot of poaching of staff between operators. Transport Malta has at times found it hard to keep up. Pace also asked operators to stop hiring from the regulator.

If you are depressed about European business aviation you should visit Malta (CJI Malta will be back next year). There are other islands of optimism if you fancy a summer tour.

The Isle of Man (which has its great event soon) has built a fantastic private registry and dealmaker community. San Marino (an island surrounded by Italy, rather than the sea) has built a thriving business aviation industry with 37 AOCs. Guernsey, between the UK and France, has successfully established the 2-Reg industry. There are some bright spots if you look for them.