The annual Corporate Jet Investor Miami conference kicked off on Monday afternoon under the eye of a shifting political reality in the U.S., with open questions for the business aviation industry that are now front and center talking points. The session began with the sharing of survey data from 205 industry respondents regarding their feelings on the current state of the industry.
Notably, the median score of optimism for the state of business aviation was 7.5, albeit higher than European respondents’ median score of 6.8. Fifty percent of total respondents were most optimistic about ultra-long-range aircraft, while 75% of respondents thought preowned sales of aircraft would outperform expectations.
On the other end of the survey, respondents said their outlook was “below expectations” on the industry’s goals for carbon offsets (64% surveyed) and eVTOL aircraft (78% surveyed).
A majority of North American respondents said environmental concerns were the biggest threat to business aviation, while a majority of international respondents said it was government regulations.
The following panel featured NBAA senior v-p of government affairs Kristie Greco Johnson and GAMA v-p of operations Jens Hennig. They turned toward what could be ahead for business aviation under president-elect Trump.
“We saw the challenges of polling again this cycle. Both sides felt pretty confident going into this election that they had done what was needed to win,” said Johnson. “The Democrats fell short. There were a lot of surprises in there we can talk about. I talked to my friends, I spent a lot of years campaigning at the presidential and congressional level, and people had a lot more confidence than what the outcome was.”
Hennig noted that he was not surprised by the outcome. “I spend a lot of time traveling through the country. Traveling around in 2016, traveling around in the last few years, it was not only the same feeling, but people were excited in a much more open way,” he said.
“The simple test was the number of Fox News Channels you saw on televisions. This was somewhere it became clearer and clearer over the last few years that we were heading in the same direction as 2016.”
With that change, Hennig noted, was a need to reframe business aviation in a new era of politics, including a renewed focus on the FAA.
“Huge turnover, we've got to reintroduce ourselves on Capitol Hill,” he said. “We gotta reintroduce the industry to stakeholders. This will happen quickly and with a lot of energy, that’s clear. On the FAA side, the FAA has gone through a lot of leadership changes. One of our frustrations has been a lack of stable leadership. It’s hard to get a lot done when people in key leadership positions keep turning over. That’s been a challenge to the agency on top of many other challenges.”
Another question is the future of sustainable aviation fuel and the looming IRS audits for the industry.
“There’s a lot in sustainable fuel production for blue-collar workers. There’s a strong coalition that can advance SAF, even in this climate. We’ve worked hard to communicate the benefits to rural communities and that can help move this provision forward. That’s something we’re going to need to work closely and really hard on,” said Johnson.
“Those audits are funded through the Inflation Reduction Act. If they will change the program, how they will change the program, will they institute some provision in the tax bill, will they leverage the appropriations to ensure no money can be used to fund the audits—these are all ideas that we plan to explore with a new administration and an incoming Congress,” she added.