“There are enough people, with enough money to buy them,” Sharmaine Guelas says as she shows off the specifications of a €3.7m (£3.2m) forest green five-passenger helicopter at Elite London, a “luxury” trade fair.
Billed as a “unique platform for luxury lifestyle brands to showcase themselves in front of a select and discerning audience”, it is largely frequented by members of global super-wealthy.
Guelas, who works for Airbus Corporate Helicopters (ACH), says the ACH125 model that has flown into Wycombe airpark, north-west of London, for the trade fair this weekend is particularly popular with the world’s super-rich as they can “choose to fly it themselves or have a pilot to fly them around”.
“With 45 hours of flight training anyone can get a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) private pilot licence for helicopters,” said Guelas. “Our clients tend to like flying themselves, it’s fun and they can get to all their meetings. A helicopter buys you time, you won’t get stuck in traffic with one of these.”
Airbus, which is part owned by the governments of France, Germany and Spain, sold 393 helicopters last year, up from 362 the previous year. The helicopter division of the European aviation company made a profit of €717m, a 12% increase on the prior year while profits at the plane division dropped 25%.
Many of the helicopters were sold directly to high net worth private buyers, but also to governments and emergency services. “At events like this we get a lot of expressions of interest, and sometimes people will see them and agree to buy them on the day,” Guelas said.
The chopper that Guelas – who is training to become a pilot – is showing to prospective customers in Wycombe is actually “our entry level model”, and others in the ACH range cost up to €14m.
The Australian tech entrepreneur John-Paul Thorbjornsen recently bought a ACH125 for an around-the-world helicopter trip via the north and south poles.
Thorbjornsen, who already owns a more expensive ACH130, which he has flown 10,000 nautical miles from the UK to Australia, now plans to fly 30,000 nm through seven continents around the world.
Becca Forman is also at Wycombe to sell helicopters and fixed wing aircraft to the wealthy for her company, Helix Av. “All of our customers tend to be private owners or have a keen interest in aviation and are either buying their first one or adding to a fleet they already have,” she said.
Anna Campbell of Flightline Aviation said there was a “fair chance” that at least one of the six private planes her company brought to the show will be sold this weekend. “We have closed six sales in the past five weeks,” she said. “Everyone seems to want to get a plane for summer.”
However, the Guardian could not find anyone at the show who said they were actually considering buying. Most appeared to be content looking around the aircraft, or perhaps climbing into the pilot’s seat for a selfie.
Best friends Diana Cuff and Grace Faure-Bryan were in the market to borrow one, for a “bucket list trip of a lifetime”. “We’ve both just had quite significant birthdays,” Cuff said. “And so have a lot of our friends, so we have decided to club together to hire a private jet to fly to Paris.”
Cuff, 60, a senior project manager in financial services, said her daughter – who tours with a famous musician – had just travelled on a private jet for work and had been telling her all about the experience.
“I’m not jealous exactly, but it encouraged me to think about doing it,” she said. “We want to celebrate our big birthdays and drink champagne all the way, life is about experiences.”
Their research suggested the trip from London to Paris would cost about £10,000. “We’ll be getting the Eurostar home, but we will have had a great time.”
