Managing the boom in private aviation flight operations

During the travel downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as aviation struggles to achieve a consistent new normal in the context of staffing shortages and the pilot crunch, the world of business aviation flight operations continues to change at pace. To learn more about how the sector is managing the boom and managing demand, we sat down with Jonathan Evans, cofounder and chief executive of aviation software provider KinectAir.

At one important end of the business aviation market, Evans tells us, “we’ve become a real lifeline for communities who have seen airlines cancel routes on which they used to heavily depend for both business and leisure travel.”

Indeed, the US Regional Airline Association estimates that 76 percent of airports in the country saw diminished service or lost it entirely. Regional services in particular have been cut, partly owing to the need to move pilots up the aircraft size ladder: a pair of pilots who five years ago might have expected to fly a regional jet with 50 or 70 seats are now flying a mainline airliner and its 150 to 200 passengers, and that regional jet might now be retired.

“There are now scores of cities with no viable flight connections to smaller communities that used to get several flights a week or even a day,” Evans says. “We expect to see more demand from communities with no air connectivity. Some towns are beginning to subsidise loss making flights to large airports, which is crazy, but it shows the importance to the community to attract jobs and tourism.”

Fundamentally, the demand drivers behind this boom are similar to before COVID, but have been accelerated by a combination of factors. In addition to the airline retrenchment, a key driver is the remote and hybrid working revolution and executive displacement from cities, suburbs and exurbs to more rural locations. Another is the changing connectivity landscape, from 4G to 5G and from slow older geostationary orbit satellites to new faster options and low earth orbit Internet offerings.

Enter the model of private aviation as a rural and regional connector. The problem, Evans says, is that “as a commercial hub and spoke system retrenches, business aviation is still a very inefficient industry thanks to a lack of network effects and software to manage fleets, pilots and customer demands in real time, or close to real time.”

The lack of digitalisation in the charter booking process is a major blocker of supply. In essence, despite more passengers than ever using non-airline flights, empty legs (either on outbound or return flights) remain a key blocker to a more efficient use of aircraft, pilots and fuel — and, indeed, to lowering emissions.

Improved software and booking platforms are a big part of the solution. “With the technology that exists today in these super computers we carry in our pockets and an intelligent AI and demand generation driven network of aircraft working in harmony, we can make from 15-25 percent more efficiency for the business aviation industry,” Evans estimates. “This can be passed on to customers in cheaper fares that connect communities, making it affordable for many millions of people using state-of-the-art turboprops.”

Evans highlights that “sustainability and efficiency of the fleet operations is front of mind for new customers in private aviation, so we have oriented our solution to the most efficient types of aircraft — not jets at this time — and moving them in efficient ways using software until the electric and hydrogen aircraft of the future appear in the next decade.”

Looking towards the future, those new low-carbon aircraft are a major operational milestone, while increasing efficiency using artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimise operations is a closer step away.

“These steps,” Evans concludes, “will cut massive amounts of cost for customers, bringing new affordability to private flying, while making the most of the carbon that is being used by the aircraft of today.”

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