Luxaviation’s CEO, Patrick Hansen has published an open letter slamming the ‘expensive’ nature of EBACE and stating that the company will not be participating as an exhibitor at 2019’s event.
The letter notes: “I truly appreciate much of the work that EBAA is doing in defending business aviation’s interests with the European Union and local institutions.
This is why the Luxaviation Group is supporting your association with many of our resources. However, as the CEO of Luxaviation Group, one of the largest business aviation groups globally and in Europe, I decided to share with you my frank thoughts on EBACE.
As I am convinced that these thoughts are not only mine but are echoed throughout the European business aviation industry, I decided to make this an open letter and hope that some of my industry peers see this as an impetus to share the same concerns and conclusions with you.
The CEO continued, “business aviation’s main concerns should be safety, safety and safety. Accordingly, most money and attention should be spent on improving the quality and safety of the services that we deliver.
Over the past years EBACE, organised by EBAA, has certainly also improved in quality, but I can assure you that for operators, handlers and maintenance organisations and I assume even for OEMs, it has become very expensive to participate in and exhibit at. Not just because of the direct costs, but because of the indirect costs too.
Attending EBACE can easily cost businesses hundreds of thousands of euros in direct and indirect costs. We believe that moving EBACE to a less expensive city than Geneva would undoubtedly bring huge cost savings to exhibitors and attendees.
The letter concludes, “the time has come for EBACE to change. The event must respond to economic realities and EBAA should ask itself if an event in this format is truly representing the many facets of business aviation as claimed by its Expanding Horizons campaign.
EBACE certainly should continue existing…but you must reinvent it for the event to be having a positive value to the industry. I certainly hope that more people would share their similar views with you and that this open letter could thus bring change to a passionate and value-creating niche.”