Corporate Jet Investor: Business aviation is where AAM will plant roots

Published: Corporate Jet Investor, July 2024

“The industry is an incubator of technology; we have always sought to be more efficient and to fly less expensively,” said Kurt Edwards, director general, IBAC at our CJI London conference in February. “We are the first to introduce new technologies into the broad industry. Those winglets you see on the tips of aircraft wings were first put on a business jet in 1976. Avionics and glass cockpits, which allow aircraft to fly more directly, that was business aviation too. Developments that take place in our industry first, spread and improve the total air transport system.”

Using that logic, it follows business aviation may have a key role to play in scaling up electric flight and advanced air mobility (AAM), particularly for operations. Recent agreements between established business aviation fixed-based operators (FBOs) and leading electric aircraft developers show stakeholders in both industries feel similarly. Clay Lacy has reached agreements with Joby and Overair.