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According to Avinode, about 35% of all business aviation flights in Europe are one-way travel and therefore about 33% of all flights are empty. This means that of the nearly 420,000 annual business jet flights in Europe, approximately 139,000 are empty.
The reality is that even though there are a large number of empty legs every year, only a fraction of them can be used for one-way travel, which should improve the efficiency of the industry. This is because, although our business has an extensive route network, only a limited number of routes are operated with such frequency that empty sections can be congested. In addition, it is also difficult to pick up empty hauls if the journey is to and fro or consists of multiple flights.
However, if we look at 44,000 flights on the 100 most popular annual routes in Europe, it turns out that 15,400 are part of a one-way trip, of which about 5,000 were empty. Based on analysis of Avinode data and up-to-date information on flights from Eurocontrol, as well as based on differences in aircraft size and traffic density, Avinode estimates that at least 2,500 of these flights were unnecessary. With an effective method of matching empty hauls and one-way trips, the market can easily increase efficiency by 6% on Europe's 100 busiest routes.
Avinode has a long history of helping charter companies to improve their performance, and this year the company has taken another step towards supporting the industry. Over the past few months, Avinode has been working to update and improve the empty haul search engine to provide better alignment and efficiency gains in the European skies.
In the case of business aviation, operational efficiency is derived from how much of the total flight distance the plane flies empty. Typically, this value varies greatly from region to region. For example, in the United States and Russia, an airplane spends much less time in flight than in Europe, where, as a rule, it takes a relatively long flight to pick up passengers.
On May 7, 2014, the company released the first set of improvements to its Marketplace system that gives users access to more systematic and reliable empty hauls. This is achieved through a number of innovative updates, including an empty track checker and an improved Avinode flight plan capture tool. This will help users sell empty hauls more transparently and reliably.
