December 2024 marks the end of an episode that began 5 years ago with the biggest global crisis in recent history, the Covid-19 pandemic. The total suspension of human mobility for several months affected all transport sectors, and global aviation bore the full brunt of this unprecedented crisis. Business aviation did not escape this situation, although its evolution in the months and years that followed was quite singular.

Business aviation in Europe came to an almost complete standstill between March 2020 and May 2020, before picking up again in the summer of 2020, when business aviation surprisingly returned to ‘normal’ levels. This situation is easily explained, however, by the fact that business aviation, which is tailor-made and on-demand, was a perfect response to the mobility needs of individuals who had no real alternative anymore, since airlines were completely disrupted. Then came the second lockdown, which immediately led to a further drastic reduction in activity until mid-2021.

As the pandemic slowed and vaccination measures began to take effect, and society gradually reopened up, an extraordinary episode for business aviation began. Several parameters converged to make on-demand aviation the formula in vogue. Commercial air traffic still largely disrupted, the fear of travelling with third parties, high demand for business aviation leading to increased price competition (and therefore lower prices for travellers) and many other factors led to an unprecedented series of 16 exceptionally active months for business aviation in Europe (between June 2021 and September 2022), with activity levels fluctuating between +10% and +20% of its average levels before the crisis.

During these 16 months, the exceptional increase in activity was mainly driven by commercial activity (air taxi) and small aircraft. This suggests that the increase in traffic was mainly due to new customers entering the market. The reasons for the arrival of these new customers are numerous and explainable, but it is certain that many of them would return to the regular offer as soon as it resumed. Unsurprisingly, this is what happened, and the resumption of air traffic coincided with a return to normal levels for business aviation. Indeed, from autumn 2022 onwards, business aviation stabilised and gradually returned to more traditional levels of activity, in line with the pre-Covid period. At the end of 2024, business aviation activity in Europe is similar to 2019. We are far from an industry that has exploded.

This 5-year period was, and still is, the subject of many fantasies. In fact, many of the players in the business aviation sector have openly reported on their extraordinary activity, something the industry is not used to doing. This new visibility has been seized upon by opponents of business aviation, against the backdrop of the climate crisis. A time of extremes and fantasies, we are still hearing today that business aviation has exploded, which does not fail to fan the flames of polarised visions and increasingly virulent opposition to business aviation, sometimes based on environmental arguments but mostly based on class struggle.

But here’s an interesting twist to close this analysis. Let’s consider 2022, a year called by some as “the year of all records” for business aviation. A boom, they say. A revolution in flight activity! In reality, European business aviation recorded around 750,000 flights in 2022—essentially matching the figure from … 2007, 15 years prior.