FEATURE EXECUTIVE AVIATION
“Jets give you the ability to adhere to impossible schedules, to change mid- schedule and gain access to places commercial airlines can’t take you”
Mustang, which lend themselves to an air taxi service, can be used at airports with runways as short as 3,000ft and have low operating costs. Business models for jet charter also
vary according to purpose. Those who own a jet may want the convenience of operating at short notice and have a high volume of travel, a minimum of 400 hours. “One of the benefits of ad hoc charter is
the ability to use an aircraft without the high fixed cost, financing, depreciation, crew, maintenance, hangar costs, paperwork of ownership and personal liability,” says director of UK private jets for Air Partner, Simon Wheatley. “Ownership is not for the faint-hearted.” Fractional ownership, which also
requires a high volume of flying to give commercial advantage, allows users to buy, say, 50 hours of use. But owners have to commit to two or three years in advance, and extras include fuel, crew and landing fees; and the asset is on the company balance sheet. Jet cards, meanwhile, allow users to buy a number of aircraft charter hours
upfront and at a fixed cost. “It tends to be cheaper per hour than fractional ownership but may or may not be cheaper than air charter. Over time you may end up paying the same per hour,” says Simon Wheatley. Least flexible is the empty leg option which sees operators selling space on an aircraft that is repositioning at discounts of up to 70 per cent. In March, PrivateFly was offering a flight between Geneva and Manchester on a six-seat Citation CJ2 for £2,750, against the usual £7,980. The penalty is flexibility: the aircraft departs at a specific hour and the original booker may cancel or re-schedule the flight. A handful of commercial airlines has
also spread their wings into jet charter, including Lufthansa, Qatar Airways, Delta, Emirates and Etihad. British Airways’ relationship with
CitationAir ended in 2011 due to lack of demand but, possibly reflecting the differences between the UK and US markets, Delta Private Jets saw a 68 per cent jump in charter sales and 20 per cent increase in Jet Card sales in 2014,
alongside a doubling of its fleet size. Qatar Executive, meanwhile, has almost tripled in size since its launch in 2009. TMC Global Travel Management has
also jumped on the bandwagon and merged with broker NK Jets to form Global Travel Jets. “We are already 25 per cent up on bookings compared to the same period last year and have won over GTM clients who have not used jets before,” says Nick Krender, who heads up the company’s jet department.
PUTTING A PRICE ON IT
A round-trip from London to meetings in Frankfurt and Rome on scheduled airlines for six passengers, would normally take two days and cost around £11,400 ($18,169), based on fl exible airline tickets and adding the cost of overnight hotel accommodation and meals into the equation. A light business jet would cost around £11,700
($18,647) for the same trip. But with that small increase in cost, you can cover the entire itinerary in a day, leaving no later than commercial services and arriving back home at around 7pm on the same day.
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 65
PRIVATEFLY
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