Dubai: After two years in the making, new legislation to crack down on the illegal chartering of business aircraft is to be unveiled at the Middle East Business Aviation (MEBAA) event next month in Dubai.
“Today all the rules and regulations for business aviation are the same as those for commercial airlines, but we are a completely different operation,” Ali Al Naqbi, founding chairman of MEBA Association, told Gulf News. “So we have been drafting specific rules for business aviation which are not currently in existence. And we should be able to launch the programme during the show as a way to kick things off.”
This had been an ongoing process since Al Naqbi outlined the policy at the previous MEBA event in 2012, where a joint initiative agreement was reached with US-based General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA). MEBA has been collaborating with 23 regional authorities on the much-needed legislation.
The proposed regulations are a direct response to the dangers posed by the grey market, which reportedly accounts for up to 25 per cent of all business aviation operations in the region. The Middle East business market is predicted to reach a value of $1.3 billion (Dh4.7 billion) by 2020, growing at a compounded annual rate in excess of 9.4 per cent in the next two years, according to an Infiniti Research report.
The grey market loosely refers to private aircraft owners, who, without an air operator’s certificate (AOC), conduct illegal charter flights. Severe undercutting of organised market rates for business jets by up to $10,000 per hour is common practice in grey market transactions.
Al Naqbi describes the grey market as ‘a disaster for this region’, and says stakeholders have a lot of work to do if the fledgling industry is to eventually win the fight against the profit-eating parallel operators.
“The authorities are not putting measures in place to stop it [grey market activity],” Al Naqbi said, adding unlike Europe where spot checks for registration and licence papers are conducted when an aircraft lands, the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), along with the rest of the aviation governing bodies in the region, do not enforce the same rules here.
“In Europe, everything is checked, because they there is a lot of grey market activity coming from the MENA region. So, shame on us,” he says.
One of the greatest frustrations in attempting to confront the grey market, Al Naqbi adds, is identifying the root cause of the problem and being able to define it. “It could be the operator, the GCAA, the airports, the FBOs (fixed based operators), the pilots — we just don’t know. It’s the whole environment that’s made it so complicated.
“To put it into perspective, when I went to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) with this problem, they didn’t even have definition of the grey market. The ICAO themselves don’t know what it is.
“So now we are working to define what exactly the grey market is. It’s a long process, but it needs to be done.”
The MEBAA conference will held on December 7 and the trade event from December 8-10 at the Dubai Airshow site at Dubai World Central.
