Europe’s 2018 business aviation traffic is off to an even stronger start than North America's, with a year-over-year increase of 6.6 percent in departures, according to WingX’s monthly Business Aviation Monitor. This compares with the overall annual increase of 3.9 percent from 2016 to 2017. Most of the traffic was intra-European, with strong growth in piston activity (up 21 percent in Germany, for example) and charter flying up by 8 percent throughout the continent.
With a strong push from the Davos World Economic Forum, Switzerland saw large-jet flying up by 22 percent YOY. Zurich had 1,200 departures over the course of the month. France experienced the largest increase in the number of flights in January, up by 6 percent YOY. Flights to France from Italy, Spain, and Germany increased by 10 percent.
Traffic to and from outside of Europe dipped, however, with departing flights to the Middle East seeing large declines, according to WingX. There was also a dropoff in flights to North America, though traffic to South America saw a “relatively large increase.” Traffic to Europe was “variable” with large decreases from the CIS, Middle East, and east Africa, but an uptick in flights from the rest of Africa and the U.S.
