BBGA Conference Looks at 'Cleaner' Aviation with Erik Lindbergh, and Addresses GA's Image Problems in the UK

The British Business & General Aviation Association (BBGA) held its annual conference on Thursday, March 7, 2024 in London. The BBGA has stepped up to the mark in recent years and is now leading the way in Europe with a scheme to counter the ‘bad press’ the sector often gets. It aims to promote the economic advantages of using business aviation versus the oft-reported private use which accounts for a relatively small proportion of non-scheduled flights, while setting out to explain that business aviation continues to strive to operate in a more environmentally sustainable way. In essence, it is formulating a European approach with similar aims to the ‘No Plane, No Gain’ campaign created in the U.S. by the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) some years ago. More of that later in this report…

Keynote speaker at the day-long event, held at London’s Leonardo Royal Hotel London St. Paul’s, was Erik Lindbergh, a leading proponent of hybrid-electric aircraft as well as being the grandson of the first person to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh. Introducing Lindbergh, BBGA CEO Marc Bailey noted, “[Erik’s] grandfather showed the world that aviation was useful for commercial purposes.”

Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh, addresses the 2024 BBGA Conference

Erik professed that he’d like to see the first flight across the Atlantic in an electric aircraft on the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s epic flight, on May 21, 2027 (perhaps from New York JFK to Paris Le Bourget again, a trip that took Charles 33 hours, 30 minutes). Erik emphasized the effectiveness of prizes in spurring such endeavors, including the $25,000 for that crossing and the XPrize Foundation’s effect on creating a new private space-flight sector.

Reflecting on his involvement in the Lindbergh Foundation, he said it would make sense if the 100th anniversary of the flight tied in with the drive to “decarbonize aviation.” Erik Lindbergh is no stranger to the new world of hybrid-electric aircraft with his company VerdeGo Aero specializing in hybrid propulsion systems for aircraft.

Concluding his address, he said: “I’m looking forward to flying in a sustainable aircraft from New York to Paris. But can it be done in 2027?”

A short video address was followed by current UK aviation minister Anthony Browne MP, who reflected on the importance of the UK ‘Flightpath to the Future’ initiative, the JetZero Strategy and the ‘Reach for the Sky’ Challenge Fund. “We will work together to create a bright future for business aviation,” concluded Browne.

This led to a slightly more sober topic, that of the ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation) which the UK is currently rolling out – it started in November 2023 with Qatari nationals traveling to the UK and has now expanded (in February) to include Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Jordan – although it is not yet being enforced.

ETA is similar to the U.S. ESTA system and ETAs are valid for two years, covering multiple visits to the UK in that period. “At the moment it is like looking for a needle in a haystack when people come in,” said Nigel Farnier, deputy director passenger policy and border transformation with the UK Home Office. ETA’s do not apply to British and Irish citizens and applications, costing £10, are quick and easy to complete, he said. Roll-out is due to be completed “in around a year,” said Farnier. He admitted there is still “a big communications job” to do, for example informing people that you also need an ETA for transiting the UK, even if remaining airside. As such it is termed a ‘universal permission to travel’ to the UK.

Traffic Looking Up

No bizav conference would be complete without crunching some traffic numbers, and to that end, Richard Koe of WingX obliged (his company now being part of JetNet). He said, “Global bizjet activity slipped 4% in 2023 but is still 20% up on 2019.” He observed that there had been a “step change” in business aviation demand – with particularly large growth experienced in Latin America, Africa and Australia/the Asia-Pacific “even though traffic outside North America and Europe still represents 10% of the global total. Additionally, in Europe he said “we’ve not seen the big step change compared to 2019 that we have seen in North America” – the Ukraine situation has seen a drop in Russian traffic as much of that fleet has relocated to Turkey and the Middle East.

Another trend highlighted by Koe is the reduction in corporate flight department activity contrasting with an increase in fractional ownership programs, where there has been “more activity than ever.”

In terms of hubs in Europe, London remained the strongest in 2023 (and accounted for almost 66% of UK traffic) with Paris in second, but Milan, Istanbul and Mallorca have grown markedly. London-Paris remains the busiest city-pair, followed by Nice-London and Geneva-Paris. Connections between Europe and the rest of the world also “increased a lot.” From a Eurocontrol viewpoint business aviation accounted for 9% of traffic and represented an increase though he said “the longer-term view is less impressive” with CAGR of only 1% over 10-year and 20-year timeframes, and 0% if viewed over 5 years (well behind the low-cost airline sector). However, scheduled airline traffic in Europe is still around 16% below 2019 levels based on sectors flown.

Aoife O'Sullivan, BBGA Chair, handles a Q&A session

During a short Q&A session, Aoife O’Sullivan, BBGA chair and partner with The Air Law Firm, pointed out that the fact a significant number of UK flights were London-London (meaning one London airport to another) didn’t look good environmentally. Koe said he did not know what proportion of these were maintenance and check flights, rather than positioning-to-park flights. Robert Walters from London Biggin Hill Airport suggested, on a linked topic, that while there was a “reliever-airport policy” in the U.S., in Europe there is a “policy vacuum” on infrastructure whereby the use of smaller airports could be encouraged. He said larger airports often talked about business aviation in a negative way and even suggested excluding it – for example Dublin Airport, and Amsterdam Schiphol.

Landing in Poor Visibility

The next session was a discussion about the UK’s loss of access to EGNOS, the EU’s Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) that had allowed pseudo-precision approaches to many UK airports. Only the Channel Islands, which have their own agreement with the EU, still have the so-called LPV approaches which give accurate glideslope guidance, as well as lateral guidance, to pilots.

BBGA CEO Marc Bailey said, “We’ve gone backward in the UK” [in the US the equivalent of EGNOS is WAAS]. “It is actually quite a serious issue – 95% of airfields in France and in the US have coverage,” he noted, adding “We’ve been very active on this but haven’t made the necessary headway” [Note at the time of writing a letter from the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Aviation had been sent to the UK Government and a meeting was due to take place on Monday, March 25].

Paul Fraser-Benison, who worked with the CAA on GPS approaches until 2016 (the year of Brexit) and strived to continue that work through his consultancy, Merlin Aerospace, said that originally the UK CAA had “given away six approaches for free” – and there was DfT (UK Department for Transport) grant-funding “as procedure design is expensive.” He said that there were 40 GPS approaches in the UK “when the shutters came down” on June 25, 2021. “Next there would have been Point-in-Space approaches for helicopters,” he added.

Lord Barkely, who when not in the House of Lords in London resides in the Isles of Scilly, west of Land’s End, said that such islands “rely on ships, Twin Otters and helicopters” and the effect of not having the ‘LPV’ approach capability (given such airports don’t have ILS) is significant. “The health effect of not being able to get to hospital can be quite severe,” he said. He lamented that despite protestations he and others made, the Government in its Brexit arrangement decided not to fund continued access to EGNOS, “which was only £35 million a year. So peanuts in government terms.”

Thus the aforementioned letter was drafted, he said, “As we must have something put back urgently…why not switch EGNOS back on until we have something else? The thing is to start now with something we know that works.”

Sterling Work, BBGA…

The BBGA AGM followed with O’Sullivan stating: “Not everyone appreciates the sterling work that goes on at BBGA (some of which we can’t talk about). We’re doing a lot to try to distract attention in the media away from it being seen as fat cats and big aircraft [more on this later].

Marc Bailey continued: “We’re working on unifying the voice of commercial GA…looking at what we do strategically with the regulators and government, working with AOPA UK, ARPAS-UK [the UK Drone Association] and BHA [the British Helicopter Association].” He said another goal was to ensure there is a continued presence at EASA, post-Brexit. With the CAA, BBGA and the others are working on charging/fee levels, “helping to achieve value for money”, while last-but-not-least, careers- finding the next generation - is high on the agenda for BBGA, said Bailey.

BBGA managing director Lindsey Oliver gave an update on the efforts to improve perceptions of the business aviation sector among the public and in the ‘corridors of power’. This is being coordinated through the Messaging Strategy for Europe (MESTRA) which has four subgroups, Government Affairs, Sustainability, Media & PR, and Industry Communications. Although being led by the BBGA as the first initiative of its kind in Europe, some other business associations in Europe have adopted a similar approach and much of the impetus came from early work with EBAA, the European Business Aviation Association. So something with the effectiveness of the NBAA-led ‘No Plane, No Gain’ initiative in the US seems to be developing in Europe – spurred on by environmental protests at events (such as the 2023 BBGA Annual Conference) and EBACE 2023 in Geneva. The increased level of security was very evident at BBGA’s event this year.

Breaking for lunch, media delegates soon gathered in a side room for this year’s ‘focus session’ for the press. The theme was AAM (Advanced Air Mobility) and the discussion ranged from infrastructure funding to uncertainty over which vehicles will end up succeeding, and even insurance (the comment from Skyrisks’ CEO Alistair Blundy being, “eVTOLs will only be successful if they can get insurance…)

A report by BBGA PR-partner Emerald Media can be found at  https://bbga.aero/talking-evtols-and-the-development-of-vertiports-in-the-uk/

Two key comments this report highlights are first, on using existing airfields first, this is something the CAA advocates, according to the UK aviation regulator’s vertiport policy specialist Jeremy Hartley; and that airport operators are struggling to see how they can help to fund vertiports without better certainty as to timing of repayment through activity – something underlined by James Dillon-Godfray, business development director of London Oxford Airport and the London Heliport at Battersea. He is also concerned that such a heliport would not have space for eVTOLs to hang around recharging.

Tim Fuchon, CEO of the BHA, noted that it’s “bad enough keeping the local council happy at Battersea” – there is always a huge amount of resistance to placing new heliports in London and other cities in the UK. Yet, as Dillon-Godfrey highlighted, once people are shown how quiet electric flying vehicles are, they may be more receptive.

The parting question was what the map symbol for a vertiport would be - a V inside a circle?

Ask The CAA

The next session of the BBGA annual event saw some representatives from the CAA take to the stage, with some operators reflecting on how hard things had become for UK operators post-Brexit, and whether the CAA is really fit for purpose and can provide the service levels the industry needs.

David Kendrick, who heads the CAA’s department for operating licenses and permits, insisted, “The CAA does push the UK as a good place to do business…I’m not sure how we get that message out more efficiently.” He also said his department “runs 24/7, for example for air ambulance or humanitarian operations – even if not for commercial permits.”

Glenn Bradley, CAA head of flight operations, said that the organization has five key roles, and the fifth is for it to be ‘an enabler’ – “We’re obliged to do that…and [to that end] we’ve embarked on a customer experience modernization program.”

Clearly, a lot of aircraft transactions do not now go through the UK, if Aoife O’Sullivan’s experience is anything to go by, although Marc Bailey commented that the industry was happy to support the CAA, and O’Sullivan welcomed how closely the BBGA and CAA had been able to work together constructively in recent years.

“We’d genuinely like to make the UK the Registry of Choice,” Bailey noted while suggesting that the number of aircraft on the UK G-register and the number of transactions “could be turned around despite Brexit.”

Kendrick said: “We’re getting used to Brexit now and in two years’ time the [UK-EU] Treaty can be reassessed.”

On the airworthiness side, CAA chief surveyor Stuart Algar agreed that the EU-UK agreement “stifles the ability to transfer aircraft easily, [for example] you can’t transfer to/from an EU registry on a valid ARC [Airworthiness Review Certificate] – it would be nice if we could go back to that. He said the CAA had completed around 120 import C-of-As and 85 export C-of-As [Certificates of Airworthiness] in the past year, up 20% on the previous year – so we are getting more efficient.”

Algar concluded that he would like to see “a full BASA [Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement] between the UK and the EU.”

The following presentation was made by Tim Johnson, director of strategy & communications at the CAA, who started by thanking Marc Bailey for his role in chairing the CAA’s finance and service forum. Johnson said, “We have released a new strategy for the CAA today – ‘Protecting People, Enabling Aerospace’. This is formed of five key areas: 1. Protecting consumers and the public; 2. Enabling aviation and aerospace to innovate and grow; 3. Developing relations to improve standards globally; 4. Supporting aviation to improve environmental sustainability; and, finally, 5. Enhancing the CAA to deliver the strategy.”

During the short Q&A session, AOPA UK CEO Martin Robinson said this was all well and good but, “We would like to see more focus on making it easier for our members to survive” – given the fragility of the light GA sector, including training organizations and airfields. “You should focus on day-to-day operations as well as on the future – they pay for your services.”

Funding Innovation: Europe?

Switching to innovation and very much looking to the future, the next presenter was Louise Mothersole of Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency. She said that Horizon Europe could still provide research and innovation funding for UK entities developing clean energy solutions and that UKRI (UK Research and Innovation, part of Innovate UK) can provide guidance through the application process.

Mothersole said the call for proposals was out at the moment for the next Horizon program and that various aviation companies were already involved and had received funding for clean aircraft research, including Pipistrel, Leonardo, Zeroavia, and Rolls-Royce.

And Finally: Flying Boats

With so many electric and hybrid aircraft development programs around the world now, one novel project was the topic of the next, and last, presentation of the day – an amphibious seaplane/flying boat known as the Noemi that has been designed by Norwegian company EL Fly, named after founder Eric Lithun.

He described the Noemi as “like a Twin Otter on top and a Mallard on the bottom” with the battery packs in the hull making it very stable on water, he claimed. It will be a nine-seater, plus luggage, similar in size to a Cessna Caravan, and will be amphibious. Lithun envisages that it will have several variants, including high-capacity seating (13), special-mission variant, medevac and cargo. Lithun is an IT entrepreneur and pilot who has invested some $10 million of his own money, which has been matched by other investors – but he is looking for more. The plan is to build a full-scale prototype which will fly in 2026.

The next BBGA event is the House of Commons Reception 2024, sponsored by Jetcraft and Air BP, which will take place on the evening of Wednesday, July 24, 2024 (coincident with the Farnborough International Airshow).