As with its commercial counterpart, business aviation in Asia-Pacific is on the up. This week’s Singapore air show will see a raft of manufacturers, charter operators, aircraft management specialists, and maintenance providers promote their products and services to a growing pool of users.
One feature of the Asia-Pacific business aviation market is that it is not a monolith. The region – which covers almost half the planet – includes countries at very different stages of development, from the established markets of Australasia and Japan to the economic powerhouses of India and China to Southeast Asia’s tigers.
Distances from Western capitals and the rise of successful start-up businesses, often run by first-generation billionaires, are driving demand for the new breed of extra-large-cabin, ultra-long-range business jets from Bombardier, Gulfstream and Dassault.
Another factor is the increase in “bleisure travel” to Asian commercial hubs that are also – or near – on-trend tourist destinations, according to Ian Moore, chief commercial officer at high-end charter provider Vista.
“We are seeing a clear trend among entrepreneurs and senior executives towards travel that combines work commitments with vacation time,” he says. “Particularly with high-net-worth individuals, the line between business and private time is increasingly blurred, as they often travel with family members.”
Dassault Aviation is among the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) with a presence at Singapore. The French company, which has more than 100 business jets in service across Asia-Pacific, is displaying its latest certificated type, the Falcon 6X.
“The show is a good opportunity for us to generate enthusiasm around the 6X by offering flight demonstrations,” says Carlos Brana, executive vice-president civil aircraft. “The market appreciates the aircraft for its quietness and handling.”
Although Brana admits Falcon sales have fallen in the region in recent years, largely due to an end to the 2010s boom in orders from China, he is optimistic, with markets from Bangladesh to Vietnam showing encouraging signs.
While Dassault has lagged rivals Bombardier and Gulfstream in bringing to market an ultra-long-range type – the manufacturer plans to roll out its 7,500nm (13,900km)-range 10X on 10 March ahead of first flight – Brana believes the Rolls-Royce Pearl 10X-powered aircraft will be a “game-changer”.
“The 7X arrived later than the [Bombardier] Global Express and [Gulfstream] G550, but that didn’t prevent it having good success,” he says, referring to the first generation of longer-range jets that emerged around the turn of the century.
The 10X’s “bigger cross-section” – at 2.77m (8.5ft) it is around 20cm wider than its G700 and Global 7500 competitors – “provides a different experience” with passengers feeling more comfortable and “like they are in their own apartment”, particularly on flights of more than 10h, he maintains.
Although only around 4% of business aviation flights in Asia-Pacific are longer than 5,250nm, Brana believes there is a market for an “aircraft that is able to perform long and short flights”.
The globalisation of trade is making longer flights necessary. “The very basis of business aviation is to save time,” says Brana. “So, if you can do these flights without a stopover, so much the better.”
Gulfstream has a G700 and G500 on display at the show. Senior vice-president of worldwide sales Scott Neal says the Savannah-based manufacturer has been the “leader” in Asia-Pacific for “more than a decade” and continues to experience “robust demand”.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Barnard, vice-president of international sales at Bombardier, says the region’s “vast geography” makes it a strong market for Global series aircraft, including the newly certificated, 8,000nm-range Global 8000 flagship.
Textron Aviation has a very different market profile to the large-jet manufacturers – its largest type is the 3,500nm-range super-midsize Citation Longitude. At Singapore, it is exhibiting two smaller Citations, the midsize Latitude and CJ4 light jet, as well as a King Air 360.
However, Lannie O’Bannion, senior vice-president global sales and operations, says the manufacturer’s portfolio is “uniquely placed” for Asia-Pacific, with its Citations popular as intra-region jets, and the King Air an evergreen in Australia and other markets for its ability to land on and take off from rough airstrips.
“Our customers range from someone flying cargo and passengers in a piston around Australia to those using a King Air or Citation or Hawker jet to run their businesses,” he says.
Textron’s newest aircraft, the long-delayed Beechcraft Denali turboprop single, a direct competitor to the top-selling Pilatus PC-12, will be an important addition to its line-up in Asia-Pacific, maintains O’Bannion. “We are excited to bring the Denali to market and think it will exceed our customers’ expectations,” he says.
Embraer, which has an 81-strong fleet in the region, is not exhibiting an executive aircraft at Singapore. It says its Phenom 100EX and Phenom 300E light jets are particularly popular in Australia and Oceania, while its larger Legacy 600 and 650 are “well matched to the region’s domestic and some international flight profiles”.
Business aviation service providers – including charter firms, maintenance specialists, and those running fixed-base operations (FBO) – have also been active in the region. They include Dubai-headquartered Vista, whose president, Asia-Pacific, Crystal Wong, sees new demographic trends afoot.
There has been an increase, she says, in business jet users in their 30s or 40s who are typically self-made entrepreneurs in technology rather than being from established wealthy families who have made their money from real estate, trading, or traditional manufacturing. Most are first-time business aviation customers.
They value time greatly and their backgrounds made them very digital-savvy, meaning that they are more receptive to innovations such as the XO booking platform, a brokerage service that uses third-party aircraft, which Vista launched in Asia-Pacific last year, she says.
The vast distances between Asia-Pacific cities and the traditional business aviation markets of North America and Europe have seen the major OEMs invest heavily in their local maintenance, repair and overhaul footprints in the region in recent years. India is the exception as its operators tend to use facilities in the Middle East.
Bombardier is the only OEM to operate a branded, in-house service network, with outlets in Singapore, Tianjin in China and Melbourne, Australia. Gulfstream relies largely on General Dynamics sister company Jet Aviation, while Dassault owns ExecuJet MRO Services. Textron, Embraer and others use authorised service centres.
ExecuJet MRO Services became part of Dassault in 2020 after its split from Luxaviation-owned ExecuJet. The organisation has arguably the oldest and largest MRO estate in the region, with six sites in Australasia, a flagship location in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and a partnership in China.
Its heritage and the fact that Dassault has a modest regional market share mean that ExecuJet MRO Services caters for a range of makes, with Australia and New Zealand focused on Textron, Embraer and Gulfstream when it comes to heavy maintenance, and Kuala Lumpur targeting mainly Bombardier and Dassault.
The facility in the Malaysian capital is the only Dassault-owned one in Asia, says ExecuJet MRO Services’ vice-president Ivan Lim. Last year, the original 2009 site at Subang airport was rebuilt to accommodate up to 15 aircraft.
While the operation is getting ready for the arrival onto the aftermarket of the latest generation jets, Lim says a lot of larger, pre-owned aircraft are coming into the region. “That’s good for us as older aircraft need a lot of maintenance,” he says.
China’s business aviation market has been bucking the trend in much of the region with a slower economy, a faltering property market, and a growing disapproval towards signs of ostentatious wealth bursting what had been a pre-Covid bubble of demand. However, there are signs the market is recovering.
In Tianjin, ExecuJet Haite is a subsidiary of local aviation group Haite, which licenses the ExecuJet brand. Founded in 2010, it operates a 5,800sq m hangar at Tianjin Binhai, with a satellite operation at Beijing Daxing, and offers maintenance on Bombardier, Falcon and Embraer jets.
While around 60% of the business’s customer base has traditionally been from China, the share of overseas clients is growing, with “rapid growth” in central and Southeast Asia, according to general manager Paul Desgrosseilliers.
He says the operation’s competitive pricing is attracting business not just from Asia but Africa and the Middle East as China steps up its efforts to establish economic and diplomatic links with countries in these regions.
While Desgrosseilliers does not expect China’s fleet to return to the mid-2010s levels “when 30, 40, 50 business jets were coming in each year”, he says 2025 saw a big increase in flight activity, with charter growing in popularity and strong demand from burgeoning sectors such as artificial intelligence and electric vehicles.
In 2025, Jet Aviation celebrated 30 years of presence in Singapore, where its 15,000sq m hangar complex at Seletar, its largest site in the region, includes an FBO. Speaking at the anniversary, president Jeremie Caillet reflected that when the business was established in 1995 “business aviation in the region was in its infancy”.
That, of course, is no longer the case. The company’s vice-president for MRO operations Asia, Louis Leong, says the city state today has become a “hub for business aviation” in terms of numbers of charter connections. That is amid a “dynamic” market elsewhere in the region, particularly in Southeast Asia and Australia.
