Looking for a way out of the dark ages
Flying into Tokyo on a commercial flight is normally a straightforward experience, involving few hassles. Arriving on a small corporate jet is a different matter altogether.
The inconveniences begin soon after the aircraft lands. The absence of VIP-clearance facilities inside airports means the busy corporate passengers will have to wait in lines at immigration. If the jet lands at Narita International Airport, then a 60-70km overland journey into town is in store.
Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and several smaller airports offer better proximity, although the small jet would be forced to leave any of them within minutes of landing and fly elsewhere just to park, thanks to the lack of parking spaces. In the end, the corporate passengers may just shrug and say, “What’s the point?”
When it comes to business aviation, Japan remains in the dark ages. A raft of stringent and outdated regulations and lack of infrastructure mean that arriving here on a small private or chartered jet is a hassle-filled experience, and so costly as to make even a billionaire wince.
When Dominik Steiner, head of the EBC Business Aviation Committee, talks about the nature of Japan’s regulations, he points to a model of the jet he used to operate, an Embraer Legacy 600, which sits proudly in his office in the Yoyogi district of Tokyo.
“It’s a Brazilian aircraft made of Brazilian parts, which are approved by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] in the US and by the European JAR [Joint Aviation Authorities Requirements],” he explains. “But if I were to register it in Japan, from then on every part on the plane would have been approved separately by the Japanese authorities.”
That means if the aircraft were to land outside Japan and need something as basic as a light bulb for the landing gear, Steiner couldn’t simply acquire the bulb locally and then install it. Instead, he would first need to ship the bulb back to Japan, have it certified by the Japanese authorities, and then wait to have it shipped back.
“So then my plane would just sit there for three weeks or so,” Steiner says. The solution would be to harmonise Japan’s maintenance requirements with those of the United States or Europe.
That recommendation is one of several listed by the committee in its Issues and Recommendations report. Others include Japan’s lack of infrastructure and a regulation imposing distance limits on aircraft when they fly over the ocean, that the committee views as unnecessarily strict. The committee is also calling for more landing slots for business aircraft at Japan’s major airports.
The issues have lingered for many years, and a failure to reform them has kept Japan’s business aviation industry well behind that of nearly all other developed countries. Despite lobbying attempts by Japanese industry associations, such as the Japan Business Aviation Association (JBAA), as well as Steiner’s own activities, only a few incremental improvements have been seen.
The EBC Business Aviation Committee is about as small as a committee can be: Steiner and his one-person company, Newjetco, are the sole members. He founded the company to carry out private aircraft management, serving wealthy individuals in Japan.
“But it’s like biting a rock,” says the former pilot from Switzerland. On top of the tough regulatory situation, he says “the mentality is still not there” among Japanese business people to opt for business jets in times of need.
That attitude is based on Japan’s postwar egalitarian credo, which frowns on flamboyant displays of wealth, as symbolised by a private jet. Yet as the committee points out in the 2010 EBC White Paper, “The lack of a prosperous business aviation industry puts Japan at a disadvantage relative to other global financial centres”.
According to the JBAA, the industry has also fallen victim to woefully bad timing. Japanese companies and the government were beginning to show some interest throughout the last decade, and the association had even dubbed 2008 as the “starting year” for business aviation in Japan on its website. But of course 2008 was also the year of the global economic meltdown, which effectively quashed any momentum.
A serious image problem emerged in the aftermath: photos were sent around the world showing three corporate jets that had just delivered the CEOs of America’s Big Three automakers, who flew in to visit the US Senate, where they asked for government-funded bailouts.
Back in Japan, Steiner notes, celebrity IT entrepreneur Takafumi Horie was convicted of fraud, making him a leading symbol of corporate excess and frivolity.
“He was one of the last customers here who wanted to buy a private jet,” says Steiner, whose main work these days is as CEO of Marono Media, a fashion channel delivered to Apple devices.
The two factors – culture and strict regulation – have trapped Steiner and other industry players in a catch-22. They need a positive regulatory environment to attract customers. Yet officials at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism have indicated a willingness to reform – if there were more customers.
“If I want to sell a service to a rich individual, I have to be able to guarantee him that I can do the service; and if I can’t do the service, I can’t get the individual. Meanwhile, the government is saying, ‘Once we have enough clients, then we might want to adjust,’” he says with a shrug.
“I think there’s still a long way to go,” the committee chairman says. “But I’m still hopeful.”