If you are interested in financial, political and technological aspects of air transport, then the upcoming Aircraft Finance & Commercial Aviation in Geneva from 23 to 26 March 2010 may be of interest for you. This event is little known outside the air transport community and has made Geneva one of the hubs of air transport finance as well.
Like the previous editions the 24th will bring together professionals from the manufacturers, the operators and the financial industry. Several hundred specialists will discuss the recent events. More important, they try to forecast the future.
Even during the recent financial crisis the often complex transactions for new investments have remained crucial for the air transport industry as a whole.
One of the topics of the upcoming conference will be the enforced “greening” of air transport. Again, the stakeholders have chosen International Geneva as their operational centre. The Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) is bringing together the various initiatives on fuel saving, CO2 reduction, biofuels and cleantech into a coherent programme. At the recent Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen air transport was the only sector which spoke with one voice and submitted a coherent long term strategy.
Unlike what popular perception (and leftist propaganda!) suggests, air transport is far more conscious about the responsibility for our common future. Why does it remain the favourite scapegoat?
Daniel Stanislaus Martel
Danstanmart's Aerospace Insights 
I agree about the importance of this event! New models of financing aircraft are needed to meet the challenges of the future. Operating costs are a crucial issue and aircraft manaufacturers try eventhing to lower them. So the TCO should be lower, but the development of fuel prices is not predictable.
Dear Paul
You are absolutely correct. Fuel prices have been looked into during the last two editions of the congress. Did you know that air transport has become far more fuel efficient over the last 40 years than any other means of transport, railways included.
As far as the purely financial side is concerned, the number of service providers in the air transport field has dropped from over 45 to less than 30 by 2009. I had some discussions with lessors at the 2009 congress. They regretted this loss of know how. Their overall position is weaker than that of the short-term minded investment and private bankers… but this is another story.
To sum it up it seems that air transport has always been a scapegoat for the left wing or “caviar leftists”. At the same time it has been snobbed as not profitable enough by the neoliberals whose only benchmark is the immediate financial profit.
Another problem is even more painful. There is hardly another sector which has been so highly regulated and thus strangled to death by bureaucrats at FAA and EASA. The days of the audacious technology leaps on a “trial and error” basis are gone. There are disruptive and revolutionary designs such as the Smartfish (www.smartfish.ch). They would dramatically reduce fuel consumption and increase ROI… but bureaucrats have always been unable to “think out of the box”.
Finally let me tell you that International Geneva may become a future hotspot of ecocompatible air transport. The locally based Air Transport Action Group ATAG) is apparently the only NGO so far which invests in a more ecofriendly air transport.
Keep on flying and many happy landings,
Danstanmart