article masthead

African bizav market set for growth

160 new aircraft set to be delivered to continent by 2025
click to visit World Fuel Services  

To coincide with Africa’s first African business aviation conference and exhibition (AfBAC), running from 29th November to 1st December in Johannesburg, South Africa, new analysis of industry data by Global Jet Capital, a global leader in financial solutions for private aircraft, reveals that the continent’s business jet market is set for significant growth.

The company predicts that the African private jet fleet will grow by more than 25% by 2025, with 160 new aircraft being delivered to the continent. These aircraft are forecast to have a total value of around $3.9bn, or just under $500m per year.

A key driver behind this growth will be the southern Africa region which is expected to account for around a third of all the jets based in the continent.

Region Private jet fleet size 2017 Anticipated private jet fleet size 2025
 
Southern Africa 145 184
Western Africa 97 124
North Africa 79 101
Central Africa 59 75
Eastern Africa 29 37
 
All Africa 408 520

The total value of the jets to be delivered to southern Africa by 2025 is predicted to be around $1.4bn. One of the big challenges in ensuring these forecasts are met and that Africa benefits from the advantages of business aviation is to have the financing solutions available to support aircraft acquisitions.

Simon Davies, VP Sales, Middle-East and Africa for Global Jet Capital, comments: “We recently carried out research amongst business aviation professionals which showed that more than three quarters expect the demand for aircraft financing to increase in the next five years.2 It is critically important that clients are able to access financial support in order to continue to develop the African business aviation fleet.

“We are seeing a growth in global demand for operating leases, which have the advantage to the operator of placing the residual risk of the aircraft with the lender rather than the lessee. We expect to see this trend in African markets as well and look forward to discussing these options at AfBAC this week.”

Global Jet Capital is capitalized by three global investment firms - GSO Capital Partners, a Blackstone company in partnership with Franklin Square Capital Partners; The Carlyle Group; and AE Industrial Partners. In January 2016, Global Jet Capital completed the purchase of GE’s corporate aircraft lease and loan book in the Americas. The company currently has approximately $2.5bn in assets under management.

BlueSky Business Aviation News | 30th November 2017 | Issue #441

 

 
sign-off Follow @blueskybizav on Twitter  

BlueSky: Your Essential Business Aviation News

Operators|Airports|FBOs|MROs|OEMs|Charter|Interiors|Avionics|Training|Inflight|Recruitment

BlueSky Advertising | Immediate Publication | Guaranteed Insertion | Global Audience

© BlueSky Business Aviation News Ltd 2008-2017