Analysis of May’s busy period
The third week in May is always a very busy time for Europe’s private jets – leading up to the busiest weekend of the year in fact.
A number of high profile events take place over this period which attract private jet travellers in large numbers. These include The Monaco Grand Prix; Cannes Film Festival; Champions League Final; Roland Garros French Open Tennis; and industry event EBACE in Geneva. This year was certainly no exception and demand was very high.
With the help of industry intelligence providers WINGX, we took a closer look at private jet arrivals at three airports impacted by these events.
MONACO GRAND PRIX & CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
Airport: Nice Cote D’Azur
Busiest day: Friday 23rd May
Top 3 most popular aircraft: 1) Dassault Falcon 7X 2) Citation XLS 3) Dassault Falcon 2000
Where did they come from? 1) UK – 22% 2) France – 20% 3) Italy – 10%
Nice airport was the busiest in Europe on Friday 23rd May, handling 7% of all Europe’s private jet movements – 256 flights in total. Over the 3 day period Friday to Monday, the airport saw 632 flight movements in all. A huge increase on a normal weekend.
Cannes Mandelieu airport is also very busy during the Grand Prix and Film Festival, but its smaller runway means it cannot handle larger, long range jet aircraft. Despite the fact that most of the flights were relatively short – most came from the UK, domestically from within France and from Italy – over half of flights were in long range or heavy jet aircraft. This may have been partly due to larger group sizes, but this type of event does attract visitors with a preference for using larger aircraft for status reasons.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL
Airport: Lisbon
Busiest day: Saturday 24th May
Top 3 most popular aircraft: 1) Embraer Legacy 2) Challenger 600 3) Dassault Falcon 2000
Where did they come from? 1) Spain – 27% 2) Portugal – 22% 3) France 12%
With two Madrid teams playing against each other, a large surge of private jets from Spain into Portugal was always likely for the Champions League Final. And this proved to be the case with more flights into Lisbon over the weekend originating from Spain (27%) than anywhere else.
Unlike for the Monaco Grand Prix, where visitors tend to arrive early and extend their trip to enjoy the whole weekend in the area, visitors using private jets into Lisbon for the Champions League Final were more likely to fly in and out quickly. The most popular day was match day itself – the Saturday – seeing 201 private jet movements at Lisbon airport. Overall the weekend saw 559 flight movements.
Larger aircraft were even more popular in Lisbon than in Nice, with well over half of flights in long range or heavy jets. The most popular aircraft was the Embraer Legacy.
EBACE
Airport: Geneva
Busiest day: Thursday 22nd May
Top 3 most popular aircraft: 1) Citation XLS 2) Bombardier Global Express 3) Hawker 800
Where did they come from? 1) France – 34% 2) Italy – 15% 3) UK – 10%
EBACE (European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition) is Europe’s biggest industry gathering for the private jet industry. It’s a trade show and air show combined, and attracts a large and diverse number of visitors from aircraft manufacturers, to industry service providers, to individual high net worths and VIPs looking at new aircraft.
Not all travel in a private jet of course (I arrived courtesy of easyJet) but the event does generate a big surge into Geneva airport during and before the event. This year there were a total of 504 flight movements at Geneva, fairly evenly distributed over the three days of the event. But also another 200+ on the previous two days, some early visitors, others aircraft coming in to be positioned for the event’s static display.
For EBACE, there was a greater spread of aircraft categories and types, as you would expect – with less of an emphasis on the larger jets. The most popular aircraft seen at Geneva over the period was the medium-sized Citation XLS, the world’s most popular private jet.
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