Time Machines

Gulfstream had a large presence, while Cessna distributor Aeromil also had aircraft on static display.

And the Australian Business Aviation Association’s (ABAA) quarterly meeting held in one of the convention rooms at Avalon drew a record high 53 members and guests.

The reason for this optimism in the market?“I think the local market is quite healthy. We are not huge in terms of numbers but we have steady growth of both turboprops and jets,” ABAA chief executive David Bell said.

Embraer Executive Jets vicepresident of marketing and sales for the Middle East and Asia Pacific Claudio Camelier said Australia was one of its top three markets in the Asia Pacific, with deliveries expected to pick up in the period ahead.

The Brazil-based manufacturer brought four aircraft to the 2015 Airshow, ranging from the entrylevel the Phenom 100 and slightly larger Phenom 300 to the midsize Legacy 500 and super midsize Legacy 650. It was the company’s largest ever presence at Avalon.

“It’s a sign we believe that Australia will grow and Embraer Executive Jets will grow togetherand we will have more jets here in the coming years,” Camelier said.

“In Australia there is a large number of mid-size cabin airplanes so we see a big opportunity there for replacing some of those older airplanes with Legacy 500s and even customers that today operate smaller airplanes growing into the Legacy 500. ” Camelier said he expected Australia’s fleet of Embraer business jets to grow from five currently as operators up-gauged to larger aircraft or updated their fleets to take advantage of the technological advancements in the industry.

Embraer has forecast about 9,250 new deliveries in the business jet sector worth about US$265 billion between 2015 and 2024, with about half of those slated for the North American market.

Recent changes to the list of aircraft permitted to operate during the curfew hours at Sydney and Adelaide airports has also been a positive for the business jet sector.

Adelaide’s list had been unchanged since 2000, while the Sydney list was most recently updated a decade ago in 2005.

Therefore, new aircraft that have been developed in that time have been prohibited from operating at Sydney and Adelaide despite often being quieter than older aircraft on the list of curfew-exempt aircraft.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Warren Truss said in February the new list for both Sydney and Adelaide airports introduced a stricter noise standard during curfew hours, as well as providing flexibility and certainty to business aviation operators about the types of aircraft they can fly.

While Bell welcomed the changes to the list, he said the ABAA would continue to push the case to lift the maximum takeoff weight restriction which currently sits at 34,000kg.

We’ve been in business for 56 years and we’ve seen these cycles since day one. ROGER SPERRY

Bell said the figure was an arbitrary number and an unnecessary restriction considering the technology operating on today’s modern business jets.

The ABAA advocated replacing the 34,000kg restriction with a maximum 19-seat rule. The proposed change required the approval of the relevant legislation through the Senate.

Meanwhile, a few metres from Embraer’s static display was Gulfstream, where regional senior vice president for international sales Roger Sperry was singing the praises of the US-based company’s range of business jets, which he said satisfied the time-poor traveller’s need for speed.

“If a CEO wastes 10 minutes he could live to be a billion years old and never make up that 10 minutes,” Sperry told Australian Aviation in an interview on board the company’s G650 at Avalon, one of two Gulfstream aircraft on display(The other was the G280. ) “If the CEO loses a million dollars there’s always the capability to make up that million dollars but you can never get time back – and that becomes the value of speed in an aeroplane. ” Gulfstream jets have set 40-odd city-pair speed records over the years, including a recent 8,010nm (14,835 km) trip from Singapore to Las Vegas that a G650ER, owned by casino boss Steve Wynn, completed in 14 hours and 32 minutes at a speed of Mach 0. 85.

Sperry said the difference between flying at Mach 0. 8 and Mach 0. 9 for someone travelling 300,000 miles (roughly half a million kilometres) a year is about 52 hours less time in the air at the higher speed.

Gulfstream has 15 aircraft operating in Australia and Sperry acknowledged the local market had come off its peak of earlier years.

However, the veteran Gulfstream executive was confident of better times ahead.

“It will come back. We’ve been in business for 56 years and we’ve seen these cycles since day one,” Sperry said.

Gulfstream launched two new models in October 2014 – the G500 and G600, bringing to eight its product line-up.

The G500 taxied out under its own power in front of about 3,000 people during the unveiling ceremony at Gulfstream’s headquarters in Savannah, Georgia.

Sperry said the G500, which has a range of 5,000nm (9,260km) and seats up to 18 people, is being ground tested and is due to begin flight testing later in 2015. The company hope to get certification for the G500 in 2017 with first deliveries in 2018.

Meanwhile, the flight test program for the 6,200nm (11,482km) range G600 is expected to begin 12-18 months after the G500, with entryinto service slated for 2019.

Bordeaux-based Dassault Aviation is also going through the certification process for a new aircraft, namely the Falcon 8X, which was now in flight test and due to gain certification in the middle of 2016 and deliveries forecast to start by the end of that year.

While declining to offer sales figures so far, Dassault senior vice-president for civil aircraft Olivier Villa says the Falcon 8X has been extremely well received since its launch in May 2014 at the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition.

“I will not tell you exactly how many orders but I can tell you that right now we are negotiating aircraft for 2018 deliveries, so it is a very good program,” Villa told Australian Aviation.

The Falcon 8X was designed to enable non-stop flights such as Sydney- Mumbai, Hong Kong-London or Beijing-Los Angeles.

And like its predecessor the Falcon 7X – there are about 250 Falcon 7Xs flying around the world – this latest model also had excellentshort-field capability, which Villa said allowed operators to have a common fleet type capable of doing a range of different missions.

This flexibility was especially important in a large country such as Australia, where towns can be large distances apart and where smaller airports can have short runways.

Dassault director of sales Didier Raynard said: “We are extremely happy to see the 8X is coming next year because I think it is going to be a very successful aircraft in this country. ” Raynard said that although the local market softened over the past year or so amid the slowdown in new mining projects, a stalling Chinese economy and weaker Australian dollar, there was still a lot of potential in this country.

“We are actually very optimistic about the future and we have got I think the right products for Australia,” Raynard said.

Dassault has 10 business jets in Australia ranging from the Falcon 7X and Falcon 900EX to Falcon 2000LX, which were used in the tourism, wine and mining sectors. The company showed off its Falcon 7X, Falcon 900LX and Falcon 2000LXS at Avalon, the highest number of aircraft it has brought to Avalon.

Hawker Pacific is Dassault’s authorised service centre in Australia.

Finally, business aviation operator Execujet said during the airshow it planned to add two more aircraft to its charter fleet, and had plans for a third in the next few months, in response to the demand in Australasia.

The company – which was also an authorised maintenance, repair and overhaul provider for a number of manufacturers – said a Bombardier Challenger 604 and Cessna Citation VII would be based in Sydney and serve destinations in Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

Execujet Aviation Group vice president for Australasia Darren McGoldrick said the company’s Australasian-managed fleet had grown from 10 to 18 aircraft over the past 12 months.