Private Jet Data Shows Southern Europe Becoming a Second Base

For most of private aviation's history, the Southern European coast has been the end of the trip. A client leaves London, Geneva or Paris, spends a week or a season by the sea, and flies home. In recent years, though, the same stretches of coast have become as well known for people settling there as for people holidaying there, and we wanted to see whether that shift shows up in how our clients actually fly.

To test it, we focused on four places that have long been the default choice for a summer abroad: the Lisbon coast around Cascais, the Algarve, Marbella and the Costa del Sol, and Mallorca. All four now have large and growing international communities. Each has a local airport closely tied to private flying in the area (Cascais, Faro, Malaga and Palma), so the flights in and out of it give a good picture of how the area is being used.

They are also, traditionally, about as seasonal as destinations get. That makes them a good test. If holiday places are turning into places people live from, these are the airports where the change should be easiest to see.

We looked at every flight Global Charter arranged into and out of these four airports between 2021 and 2026. Over that time, the flying we arranged there more than tripled.

Growth on its own would simply mean more holidays. What matters is the direction. Between 2021 and 2023, 41% of trips at these airports began there. Since 2024, the figure is 57%. More trips now start on the coast than end there.

That distinction is the heart of this story. A client that flies from London to the Algarve is on holiday. A trip that starts in Faro, goes to Sardinia and comes back is someone living in the Algarve. When a destination airport starts producing more departures than it receives, it is no longer behaving like a destination. It is behaving like home. 

Several forces sit behind this. Changes to the UK's non-dom rules in 2025, the wider acceptance of flexible working, and the appeal of the climate and pace of life have led many affluent households to rethink where they spend their year. Portugal and Spain have, in turn, built large international communities along these coasts, with the schools, clubs and services that make living there for months at a time, rather than a few weeks each summer, a practical choice.

Have people left London?

It would be easy to read all of this as an exodus from London, but the way our clients actually fly suggests something more nuanced. Around two thirds of the clients who start trips from these coastal airports also start trips from at least one other city. Most often that is London, but it is just as likely to be Nice, Paris or a city further afield.

People who fly from Cascais or Malaga have not given up London or anywhere else. They have added a base and now move between several, each used for part of the year and for different parts of life: work in one, family in another, summer in a third.

For years, the second home was a place you visited. What we see now is closer to a second base: somewhere people live from, travel out of and return to, alongside the other places they call home.

The routes tell a similar story. Where clients fly to from these airports says as much as where they arrive from. London is still the most common destination from all four. But its share of the flying has fallen from 32% to 21%, while the number of different places our clients fly to from the coast has doubled.

The coast now connects to a wider circuit: Ibiza, Madrid, Milan, Paris and the Riviera. This is the pattern you would expect from people using the coast as a base. A holidaymaker flies back to where they came from. Someone living there flies wherever the week takes them.

London has not lost its place. It has become one link in a network rather than the centre of every trip.

Is it still a summer market?

If people are living from these places, we would also expect them to use them beyond the summer, and the data bears that out. Summer still leads: June and July remain the busiest months, and flying builds steadily from April. But since 2024, over half of all flights at these airports took place outside June to August, and a quarter between October and April.

That spread matters more than the headline. A villa used only in August produces one sharp summer spike in the data. A base used throughout the year produces flights in March, November and over Christmas. The Algarve shows the change most clearly: between 2021 and 2023, less than a quarter of Faro flights fell outside the summer peak. Since 2024, more than half do.

Seasonality has not disappeared, and nor would we expect it to. What has changed is that the summer is no longer the whole story.

What does a second base look like?

Of the four airports, Cascais shows all of this most clearly. Before 2024 it barely featured in our flying. Today more than half of its trips start in Cascais, and many are round trips that leave from Cascais and come back to it.

That second detail is the telling one. Someone who visits Cascais lands there and later flies away. Someone who lives there leaves for Paris or Geneva and comes back a few days later. A round trip that begins and ends in Cascais only makes sense if Cascais is where the client sleeps at night.

Its routes point the same way. Cascais flying reaches across Europe, to Paris, the Riviera and Ibiza, more than it reaches back to the UK. That is not the pattern of British visitors flying in for the summer. It is the pattern of people who have made Cascais their starting point.

For clients living between bases, private aviation stops being a holiday purchase and becomes part of how the week works. That changes what matters: knowing which aircraft are positioned on the coast outside the summer peak, how slots tighten at Palma and Nice in July and August, and how to plan a multi-leg week that starts and ends at home, wherever home happens to be.

Our brokers arrange flights from Cascais, Faro, Malaga and Palma all year round, from light jets for a quick hop to Madrid or Paris to long-range aircraft for London, Geneva and beyond. Whether your base is on the coast, in London or both, request an instant quote or speak to our team.

Based on flights arranged by Global Charter at Cascais, Faro, Malaga and Palma, January 2021 to September 2026.