The Globalization of the Air Taxi Marketplace

Just a couple weeks before the International Air Taxi Convention, there were two incredibly exciting press releases that demonstrate the rapidly emerging, fast paced, globalization of the air taxi market. One involves our friends at Eclipse and the other involves the rapid formation and formal launching of the Air Taxi Association - Europe.

Yesterday, Eclipse announced a strategic and financial partnership with the European Technology and Investment Research Center (ETIRC). The deal includes an equity investment by ETIRC in excess of $100 million and other financial incentives to Eclipse. While the infusion of capital to Eclipse is news indeed, the terms of the partnership agreement are even more noteworthy. ETIRC now becomes the exclusive partner of Eclipse in more than 60 countries in Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Republic of Turkey. They will add Western Europe and the United Kingdom to their distribution and services area.

According to the official press release, "[a]s part of its expanded partnership with Eclipse, ETIRC has the right to establish local assembly of the Eclipse 500 within its expanded region, helping Eclipse Aviation reach its global volume production goals. ETIRC is in advanced stages of discussions for the location of the assembly facility. The City of Ulyanovsk in Russia is the leading candidate at the moment." Building Eclipses in Russia is an amazing prospect.

I have often been asked in the recent past about the viability and long term prospects for Eclipse. My answer continues to be that they are here to stay. Like any new, revolutionary aircraft - or even a new model of a car for that matter or a new piece of military hardware - there will be some growing pains and opportunities to "fine tune" the product during its infancy stage of the first five years. In fact, I can't remember a new piece of equipment that we received in the often upgraded P-3 Navy that ever operated perfectly upon receipt. But, we had smart, dedicated, hard-working sailors who answered "yes sir" to such challenges and who tweaked, fine tuned and fixed the product.

In the next 25 years, I believe names like Eclipse, Cirrus, and Adam will be more familiar to my children than other well known and historical general aviation names that my generation grew up knowing and flying. If you have read one of my favorite books, Free Flight by James Fallows, and know the background of visionaries like Eclipse's Vern Rayburn and the Klapmeier brothers of Cirrus, you know they have been at this a very, very long time. They don't accept failure. They dream of possibilities. They find solutions. They embody the "can do" spirit of other historical American aviation pioneers.

The second indication of the globalization of the air taxi market has been the rapid formation and official launching of Air Taxi Association - Europe. The founding members (and their locations) include AccelJet (Iceland), AirCab (Germany), Air-Cannes (France), BIKKAIR (Netherlands), Blink (United Kingdom), byJets (Switzerland), ETIRC (Luxembourg), GlobeAir (Austria), Gonow (United Arab Emirates), JetBird (Ireland/United Kingdom), Jet Ready (Spain), LEA: London Executive Aviation (United Kingdom), Taxijet (Spain), Wondair (Spain).

Like the US air taxi operators, some are up and flying. Some already have an Eclipse. Others will take to the sky this year. Most impressive is the geographic reach of the members and the fact that the diverse group, representing potential air taxi operations across thousands of miles, has been organized and is up and running in less than six months. These two developments continue to demonstrate to me the depth and breadth - the true globalization - of the air taxi market.