That Was The Week That Was 22-26 May 2023
EBACE: All SAF, all the time
The annual business aviation conference, EBACE, took place this week, the week that was, in Geneva. Geneva is famously not the cheapest place in Europe, so the irony of holding two conferences in such an expensive locale – air traffic management and private aviation – is not lost on many. Still, as one exhibitor at EBACE told me this week, Geneva being so expensive means that it cuts out the riff raff who would otherwise show up. The ratio of decision makers to hangers-on is much better than at many other exhibitions. So there is that.
What did we learn at EBACE23? Sustainability, sustainability, sustainability. No, sorry, that was not what we learnt, that was a typical press release, the mandatory language on the stands and hand-outs and the only topic for any presentation. What did we learn? That everyone needs to learn how to spell SAF, as a matter of urgency. Spell it; and find it. SAFs are the answer, apparently, until you ask, SAFs from where? There will be plenty of SAFs, any minute now, came the response. Any minute. Tuesday or Wednesday, for sure. Friday at the very latest. End of the week: you can bank on that.
The one thing that is clear, but not stated publicly, is that if there is a market for more expensive fuel, the private aviation crowd is that market. When price is not the issue, the cost of SAF is not the issue either. The business aviation community might well be able to corner the market for SAFs, and fulfilling its traditional role, lead the development for the commercial aviation sector. Winglets, GPS navigation, avionics; the business aviation industry has been here before. Before being the operative word. Before the rest of the industry. If biz-av is about 10% of IFR flying, it might be able to deliver on using SAF. What the commercial industry does then remains to be seen.
The other thing that EBACE has probably provided a heads up to the industry for was that there was a major disruption. The industry is about to enter AGM season, a point probably not lost on the environmental movement any more than it is lost on the aviation industry. In Geneva, protesters invaded the traditional static display of business jets arrayed on the Geneva airport tarmac, closing the airport for an hour. EBACE was smugly congratulating itself on having arranged a protest zone, and scheduled an official demonstration, only to discover that the environmentalists knew how to spell ‘sop’. ‘Hubris’ might be a good word for the industry to learn.
As AGM month kicks off in Berlin in early June with the CANSO jamboree, the next work we need to learn might be ‘decoy’.