The end of 2020 is coming
DC Aviation COVID-19 testing
Anyone involved in closing deals may be wishing for a few more days, but most people cannot wait for 2020 to end.
It has been a gruelling 12 months. The World Health Organization was only informed of cases of an unknown pneumonia in Wuhan City on New Year’s Eve last year. Covid-19 was only declared a pandemic on March 11th.
Sadly, things are not looking much better for the start of 2021. But at least we now have vaccines.
In May, we said that if you wanted to see how business aviation will recover from Covid-19, you could use this formula:
R = N – LPC
Business aviation market recovery (R) = Money from New customers (N); minus money Lost from Past Customers (LPC) who are not flying.
For most companies it has turned out to be a negative number – despite a record rise in new customers. A few companies have had a better year than 2019, but flights have been down as existing users – particularly business travellers – have been forced to stay at home.
Flight activity analysis by WINGX shows that business aviation traffic is set to end 2020 down by about 20% on 2019. This is an impressive result, (especially when compared with airlines for which sectors are down by over 50%) but still an unprecedented drop which has hurt many businesses across the industry. WINGX says renewed lockdowns in the US and Europe look to be taking at least a quarter out of demand this month, although there is some indication of increased getaway charter activity coming into the Christmas holidays.
The good news is that people are itching to fly. When stay-at-home measures and lockdowns end and borders reopen, we could see record demand. But that is for next year and maybe 2022.
On behalf of all of us at Corporate Jet Investor, best wishes for a fantastic holiday season and a Happy New Year. We hope you manage to have a break – you deserve it. Thanks again for your support and we look forward to seeing you next year.
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