What the helicopter finance market is thinking in 2014

Delegates cast their votes at International Helicopter Finance 2014.

More than 200 people attended our annual helicopter finance conference in London on February 6, 2014 and we polled the audience using electronic voting pads.

Delegates cast their votes at International Helicopter Finance 2014.

We started the day asking people how optimistic they were about the helicopter market in 2014 and with 96 per cent feeling optimistic, the room was very upbeat.

By the end of the conference people were even happier (or the one pessimistic person had left the room).

With everyone so optimistic we wanted to ask attendees what they saw as the biggest risk. OEMs have a lot of ability to shape a market but there are wide industry concerns about staffing the industry – this was stressed by Matt Zuccaro, CEO of HAI, at our Miami Helicopter Finance Conference in 2013.

One other threat to leasing companies is changes to lease accounting rules. Before Ian Nelson of KPMG spoke most of the audience admitted that they had not followed it.

We have seen several helicopter leasing companies launch in the last few years but after the helicopter leasing panel.

And the audience was not convinced that helicopter operators will lease helicopters to the same extent as airlines.

Delegates were also pretty bearish on China.

You can catch up with more from the conference on our live feed from International Helicopter Finance 2014.