• General aviation covers a wide area of operations from training to charter and air work. Much has been shouldered by Beechcraft's venerable Baron. (Steve Hitchen)
    General aviation covers a wide area of operations from training to charter and air work. Much has been shouldered by Beechcraft's venerable Baron. (Steve Hitchen)
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A private consulting firm has launched a research program into the state of general aviation business in Australia.

Azimuth Partners announced the study yesterday, which the company says will provide the industry with the first-ever comprehensive set of economic data on business operations within the Australian GA industry.

Azimuth Strategic Advisor David Young said the research report was a response to economic and regulatory challenges confronting general aviation.

“General Aviation faces a number of significant challenges in Australia, and this research aims to identify these hurdles and create strategies to address them,” he said. “Business in general faces considerable red tape before even contemplating the impact of the highly-regulated aviation industry.

"We know some businesses are facing issues with airport access and infrastructure ownership, so it will be interesting to see if this is reflected in the research."

According to Young, the report will provide hard data for aviation companies to identify improvement and information to use when lobbying the government and regulators. Young believes the new study will be of greater value to General Aviation than the 2017 BITRE GA Study.

"The report will provide hard economic data rather than simply hours flown, pilot numbers and landings performed as captured by the BITRE report," he told Australian Flying.

"The BITRE report has in its own words unreliable economic industry data obtained from multiple sources. The research report will comprehensively and confidentially benchmark the economics of the industry (to the extent that the industry business sector participates in the report) providing not only valuable economic, investment and employment data, but a comprehensive financial and KPI benchmark data base that businesses operating within GA will be able to benchmark their businesses against."

Azimuth Partners is funding the research, which will look at all aspects of operating a GA business, including:

  • success factors
  • strategic threats
  • concerns and needs, both major and minor
  • future plans
  • staffing
  • business indicator and planning, particularly growth planning.

The initial stage of the research includes two industry surveys: aviation business risks and general aviation insights, which will produce an insights report to be released by the end of 2018. Companies will then be asked to participate in a Better Aviation Business Program to provide more detailed data.

According to Azimuth, the report will be released in early 2019, and will be provided free to those companies that took part in the research program. Companies that did not take part will be able to buy the report from Azimuth.

GA businesses wishing to participate in the report can complete the survey on the Azimuth Partners website.

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