Farnborough & VLJ's

Not a lot of news has been coming out the business aviation industry in the past few days, and for good reason. From Monday 17 to Sunday 23 July 2006, aviation enthusiasts and the aerospace industry will be focused on one place - the 45th Farnborough International Airshow.

Throughout the days of the FIA, I will be updating both BusinessJet.com and BusinessJetBlog with headlines and information as it becomes available. BusinessJetBlog will have the most common entries and most complete information - but as the blog for BJC this is to be expected.

AINonline has a great feature article this month on the future of the Air Limo industry using very light jets (VLJ). I think the most telling part of the article regards the lack of financing that many of the air-taxi operators are facing. Finding adequate funding (and customers) is the key to success in any industry. That is one of the reasons that NetJets has done so well, it has access to cheap/free capital through it's parent company Berkshire Hathaway. NetJets can make large purchases of aircraft before the end customer steps forward to buy those shares because of the ability of Berkshire to allocate the capital to the venture.

I'd like to know what everyone else thinks about the "air limo" industry and what the future holds for the commercialization of the VLJ's.