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By APD writer Alice
While commercial airlines across the globe are struggling to deal with an “unprecedented crisis” caused by the acute coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a sector of the aviation industry is "thriving" thanks to the wealthy customers and it's private jet charter service.
Fears of massive bankruptcies and calls for emergency bailouts have swept global carriers in recent days with one top US official warning that the outbreak threatens the industry even more than the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Airlines around the world have reduced their transport capacity and passengers have canceled travel plans, as many countries ban entry to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. ForwardKeys, a travel analytics company, estimates as many as 3.3 million seats on trans-Atlantic flights alone have disappeared.
However, the private jet leasing company Paramount Business Jets has seen an increase of 400% in queries, with bookings up roughly 20-25 %, said its CEO Richard Zaher.
Zaher said many new bookings were from clients who had emergencies and either could not find seats on commercial routes or did not want to risk them.
For example, recently, Johnathan Hanh Nguyen - a high-end fashion retail and air transport tycoon in Vietnam, spent up to $360,000 chartering a private jet to carry his 24-year-old daughter who at that time was suspected to be infected with coronavirus from London back to Vietnam for treatment.
The cost of chartering a private jet varies greatly depending on the aircraft type, region, number of passengers and flight duration. A round-trip charter on a 12-seat plane from London to New York can cost around $150,000, while a one-way flight from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China) to Japan about $71,000. But booking a private flight from the UK to the south of France can cost only $10,000.
In Asia, where the COVID-19 outbreak originated, private jet charter companies said the number of new customers has steadily increased over the past two months, like those who fled the virus in January returned from regions where the pandemic has spread to.
Commercial flights to and from China have dropped by around 90 percent in the past two months. According to a spokeswoman for Air Charter Service in Hong Kong, the company has seen a 70 percent increase in fixed bookings from the financial hub of Shanghai and Beijing in January and February, and has recorded a 170 percent jump in new customers during the same period.
Daniel Tang, from Hong Kong-based charter company MayJets, said he has received five times the number of enquiries than normal with three times more bookings since the outbreak began.
Clients chose to charter private jets because they did not want to be confined with hundreds of people with "unknown" travel histories, and noted that private passengers usually cleared customs and immigration separate from the crowded main airport terminals.
But he said it will be more and more difficult to fly, even for private jets as more and more countries are tightening up their borders.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
