Environmental Groups Increase Pressure on Bizav in Europe

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the industry, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport announced early last month that it plans to ban private jets and small business aircraft from operating at its facility starting in 2025. The decision underscores the growing influence of the European Green Deal and the push toward climate neutrality, which are shaping public opinion and policy across the region.

By choosing to remove a part of its business that is perceived as being contentious from an environmental and social perspective, one of Europe’s largest airports took a step that might be followed by others.

“This decision is not representative of the wider aviation industry's position on business aviation,” the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) stressed. The group acknowledged, however, that Schiphol’s determination to bar business aviation flights is a “significant blow” that has caused concern among industry leaders.

“The Amsterdam Schiphol decision to ban business traffic reflects a very specific and complex set of local circumstances and must not set a precedent for the entire aviation sector,” commented Olivier Jankovec, director general of the Brussels-based airport trade body Airports Council International Europe. “Business aviation is vital for many airports and their communities across Europe. This is particularly true of regional airports, where it provides connectivity not otherwise available. Along with all aviation industry stakeholders, business aviation has as its absolute priority CO2 emission reduction and net-zero by 2050. And it’s likely to be the first segment of the aviation industry to achieve it,” he told AIN.

Despite the sector’s significant strides in decarbonizing, authorities are intensifying their scrutiny of business aviation’s environmental footprint, while climate activists are increasingly targeting business aviation throughout Europe.  

February saw an unprecedented number of sit-ins and at times violent protests as part of the “Make them Pay” campaign organized by Extinction Rebellion, Scientist Rebellion, and the Stay Grounded network. Actions took place in cities across the continent, including Brussels; Sevilla, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, and Ibiza, Spain; London; Stockholm; Malmö, Lund, and Gothenburg, Sweden; Milan, Italy, Amsterdam; Værnes and Trondheim, Norway; and Cascais, Portugal. The groups also disrupted EBAA’s Air Ops conference in Brussels, prompting NBAA and EBAA to tighten security this week at EBACE 2023.

This wave of protests followed similar demonstrations by activists demanding to “ban private jets, tax frequent flyers, and make polluters pay” in front of Dassault Aviation’s headquarters in Paris and at FBOs in the UK, Italy, and Germany during the first week of the UN climate change conference COP27 in Egypt in November. Protests to denounce the use of private jets also took place during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. 

Schiphol‘s proposed ban on business jets is not yet a done deal. According to Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands Mark Harbers, civil airports have a public charter and the operator cannot ban users without a valid reason. “There is no legal basis for restricting or denying private jets and business aviation aircraft access to an airport for sustainability reasons, or for including provisions on this in an airport decree,” he wrote in a letter to the country's House of Representatives.

Nevertheless, Harbers argued that “there is still a lot to be gained in terms of higher emissions per passenger in a private jet or business aviation compared to passengers on a regular commercial flight.” To achieve this, he said, his department is investigating whether the Netherlands could impose a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blending mandate for private jets and business aviation that is higher than what is proposed in the EU-wide ReFuelEU Aviation framework.

In fact, EBAA has been calling on the EU’s co-legislators “to make SAF more accessible in the shortest feasible time frame, considering the special characteristics of the business aviation sector,” said EBAA senior communications manager Róman Kok. The Brussels-based trade body believes that the passengers’ threshold for airports should be “significantly lower” than foreseen in the ReFuelEU Aviation proposal, which states that fuel suppliers must provide SAF at airports that handle at least one million passengers annually. 

“Many of our operations are conducted in small airports not connected by airlines, which is a key added value of business aviation. Thus, to reduce emissions within our sector, in accordance with our Business Aviation Commitment on Climate Change, it is crucial that small airports are also required to carry SAF,” he told AIN. “Should SAF not be physically available on site, EBAA supports a book-and-claim system.”

The Dutch Ministry of Finance is also looking to include more passengers from private jets and business aviation in the air passenger tax.

According to the Brussels-based clean mobility NGO, Transport & Environment (T&E), a ticket and fuel tax should be imposed on fossil-fueled private jets, scaled with flight distance and aircraft weight, to account for their “disproportionate climate impact.” The taxes should remain in place till 2030, by which time regulators should permit only the use of aircraft powered with green hydrogen and electricity for private jet flights under 1,000 kilometers within Europe.

French Effort To Ban Bizav Fails

In France,  the “Ecologiste” party recently submitted a bill proposing to ban private jets and nonscheduled flights with fewer than 60 passengers on trips from or to mainland France. The National Assembly Committee on Sustainable Development rejected the proposal.

“The outright ban gives a good conscience but does not advance the ecological transition in practice,” said French Transport Minister Clément Beaune, who pointed to the “legal obstacles” and the difficulty of defining and controlling exemptions. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that some business aviation practices by business jet owners and operators in his country were “shocking and sometimes unacceptable.”

Private jet flights are regularly coming under fire in France. Last year, the country was tops in business aircraft flights (258,222) in the European Union, up 36 percent compared with 2019, according to EBAA data. But last year they gained even more attention after an environmental activist started tracking the private jet owned by Bernard Arnault, the richest man in France.

The laviondebernard (Bernard's airplane) Instagram and Twitter accounts revealed that the Bombardier Global 7500, registered as F-GVMA, operated 18 “capricious" flights in one month, mainly between Paris and Brussels, which are 82 minutes apart by train. There was also a 10-minute flight between two London airports.

Beaune vowed that he is willing to impose an additional levy in next year’s budget, “an eco-contribution revised upwards, which will precisely take these behaviors into account,” Le Figaro reported. A “70 percent increase in the tax on private aviation fuels”—aligning the taxation of kerosene for business jets with that of cars—was already put in place in the finance law for 2023, remarked Beaune.

For EBAA, the recent developments in Europe's business aviation industry have highlighted the need for continued collaboration between industry leaders and governments to promote sustainable aviation practices while ensuring the industry's long-term viability. “We will continue to work with governments and other stakeholders to promote a balanced approach to addressing the environmental concerns of the industry while maintaining its economic and social benefits,” said Kok.