The four major airports used for last week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland, drew 440 business aircraft and nearly 1,100 aircraft movements, according to business aviation analyst WingX Advance. This was down slightly from last year's WEF. Business aircraft averaged 220 daily movements at Zurich (LSZH), Dubendorf (LSMD), Altenrhein (LSZR), and St. Moritz (LSZS) from last Tuesday through Saturday, down 6.5 percent from the 235 movements tracked daily during the WEF last year, WingX reported. Last Tuesday marked the busiest day, with a collective 170 departures and 104 arrivals.
Zurich handled 62 percent of the aircraft, with Altenrhein the next busiest airport. Jet Aviation Zurich, which prepares months in advance for the uptick in traffic during the WEF, handled 612 movements, 1,830 passengers and 306 of the aircraft at both Zurich and Dubendorf during the event. The company brought in employees from its bases in Geneva, Dusseldorf, Munich and Dubai to handle the increased traffic.
At Dubendorf, a military airport secured for overflow traffic, the event brought in record traffic and fueling, according to ExecuJet Aviation. “The World Economic Forum is one of the busiest times of the year for business jets travelling to Switzerland; the forum presents a full month’s worth of traffic in a single week,” said ExecuJet Zurich FBO manager Basil Gamper. “This year, we handled 250 aircraft movements and 430,000 liters [113,594 gallons] of fuel between our two FBOs.”
The Gulfstream V/G500 accounted for 12 percent of all of the movements, but other commonly found aircraft during the event were the Bombardier Global Express, Cessna Citation XLS, Dassault Falcon 2000 and Dassault Falcon 7X, WingX reported.