HONG KONG - With commercial airlines engulfed by the maelstrom of the coronavirus pandemic one sector of the industry favoured by the wealthy is thriving: private jets.
"Inquiries have gone through the roof," he told AFP, noting his company Paramount Business Jets had seen a 400 per cent increase in queries, with bookings up roughly 20-25 per cent."We are seeing our regular private jet clients flying as they normally do. However, we have this surge of clients coming our way and the majority of them have never flown private."
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."Her mum was on oxygen and needed to be flown coast to coast," Zaher said. A round-trip charter on a 12-seater plane from London to New York can be around US$150,000 . Hong Kong to Japan costs around US$71,000 one-way.
"It is the kind of people who are wealthy enough but who would not necessarily charter, who are maybe chartering as a one-off," said James Royds-Jones, Air Charter Service's director of executive jets for Asia Pacific."People are just trying to almost pack their house into a private jet," he said. Clients were choosing to charter 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.
Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)
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