Charter operation leaders are seeing stability in the market as it matures in Europe, and they believe that despite new technologies, products, and offerings, it structurally remains unchanged. Participating in a panel on Tuesday during EBACE 2025 on the “Reinventing Charter: What's Next?” moderated by Avinode CEO Oliver King, the executives emphasized the need to hold the line on pricing, emphasize customer service over technology, and advocate for the industry.
Harry Clarke, head of insights and analytics for Avinode, kicked off the panel with an overview of charter market patterns. He noted aircraft management still leads aircraft movements in Europe, followed by branded charter. But he also acknowledged that fractional ownership activity has picked up, too.
“So, while branded charter and aircraft management are kind of there compared to where they were six years ago, the real change here that we've seen is that fractional has grown 59% in the six years,” Clarke said.
Algernon Trotter, CEO and founder of Luminar, welcomed the fractional trends, saying it brings growth to the industry that trickles into the charter market.
Julie Black, head of UK executive charter for broker group Hunt & Palmer, agreed, noting that many of her firm’s customers are multi-modal. She contended that in light of ongoing flight shaming that has intensified in Europe, fractional provides another avenue for potential customers that may be less susceptible to such attention.
As far as current demand, the Avinode marketplace is seeing about a 3% dip in charter demand in June and July in the UK, but Germany is taking a harder hit of about 23% year-over-year in the same timeframe, in part because last year’s football tournament inflated the traffic. Italy is seeing 1% improvement, Spain 2%, and France 11%.
“It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Overall, we’re saying June down 5%, July up 5%,” Clarke said.
Avinode recently surveyed its members to gauge sentiments of the market and found most people see the charter market as stable in Europe at the moment, with a few feeling more positive or negative, Clarke said.
Yann-Guillaume Jaccard, CEO and co-founder of Simply Fly, noted that the “market has matured,” and demand is relatively unchanged from pre-Covid levels. “If you look at it in terms of movements, we are exactly where we were in 2019, which is almost exactly where we were in 2008, just before the subprime crisis.”
This underscores that little has changed in the overall flying community despite the number of people who flocked to business aviation for the first time during Covid. He also believes the U.S. has capitalized on this.
Trotter agreed, but said, “I think it’s all there for the taking still.” New customers have provided opportunities for the charter community to elevate its service and consistency.
What may have changed, though, is how people are flying, added Trotter.
Avinode also probed members about the threats to the industry, and a big topic surrounded taxes and regulation, Clarke said. Some commented about the need to eliminate luxury taxes, and others about the sheer administrative burden regulations have on their businesses.
Luxury Tax Impact
Avinode took a quick look at whether taxes are affecting charter growth, and the early answer is, not yet. Considering the French luxury tax implemented in March, charter prices increased by 9.2%. “Not a great shock,” Clarke said. “What’s more interesting is when you increase the price, does it have a knock-on effect in terms of how much people are trying to fly from France? Quoted trips passing through our platform have been pretty stable.”
He said this may be a short-term impact. It could be that long-term, people take business elsewhere, and such taxes ultimately will change people’s travel habits, he suggested. “Maybe it means that someone who would have previously booked a light jet might have to go down a category of aircraft to something a bit more affordable.”
However, Clarke added, “Alternatively, it points to the fact that, actually, people are quite resilient to price increases. So in reality, people want that service; it’s not just a transaction, it’s a whole service, it’s a whole different way of flying and traveling. If the whole industry has been forced to [increase] our prices by a certain amount, then the consumer is quite elastic and is willing to pay that.”
Ultimately, this is a wait-and-see situation, he concluded. More will be known in a year. Regardless, charter pricing has gone up significantly, surpassing inflation.
Black noted that while prices have increased, the charter market hasn’t really felt it because margins are thin. Jaccard also said margins make it important for charter providers to hold the line on pricing.
Asking about opportunities in the next five to 10 years, Avinode received some answers around data. Clarke questioned how to improve the customer experience through AI without losing a personal touch.
“It’s become a lot more expensive to fly on a charter flight. It’s actually increased a little bit more than the inflationary numbers,” he said. But there is more granularity on pricing with operators getting better at charging for specific situations.
Noting commercial aviation transformed with dynamic pricing, he added, “We are starting to see a bit more of that similar trend in business aviation.” Clarke added that this could be an emerging trend in the next decade as the industry becomes more data-driven.
“If you can make an extra €1,000 on every flight, it’s going to be a huge impact for the industry,” he said. “So, this is one area where I would certainly see there’s an opportunity to have something really positive happen.”
However, Jaccard maintained that the main factor that limits the industry on the innovation front is profitability. “The money is just not there to deliver the costs of innovation,” he said.
Trotter was also more skeptical that technology could improve charter. Scheduling optimization cuts out the “personal touch,” he added, and said he has struggled to find a technology that could retain that. Further, technology can’t address specific issues, such as constraints at certain locations that may need expertise of a broker and operator who understands the client.
Jaccard also cautioned against moving towards an airline service approach, saying it will bring pricing down and remove the personal touch.
Black agreed, saying efforts to go lower-cost harm the level of service. “The minute you make it about price, you make the level of service irrelevant, and that’s really sad.”
Trotter said he’s seen “minor tweaks on an existing formula that have more or less improved the industry. But structural changes, I am struggling to pinpoint.” However, he added, “I think the human technology interface has improved. I think the consistency of the products has improved.”
Jaccard said he was aligned with Trotter on the status of the industry’s structure. “I think that it’s so difficult to make stuff happen in Europe with the current regulatory context,” he said. “We are materially doing the same today as 10 years ago.”
Black added, “I think the biggest change has been the sort of socioeconomic shaming of business aviation, which is such a pity. We do a lot of work in the States, where there is no shame at all in traveling by business aviation.”
She continued that the industry is a proven tool for businesses and the industry needs to work on messaging “in terms of promoting the vast numbers of people that we employ, the vast numbers of economies that we regenerate, the amounts of innovation that goes on, because at the moment they're continually being regulated against, taxed against, and shamed…I would simply ask that we continue to be our advocates for the great work that we do.”