This story is part of AIN's continuing coverage of the impact of the coronavirus on aviation.
Charter and fractional industry executives agreed that they are seeing an uptick in business particularly in the past two to three weeks, but business still remains at a level that is two-thirds or less than the levels at the same period in 2019. Speaking during an NBAA Leadership Council Briefing webinar late last week, Chad Davidson, manager of fleet utilization and standardization for Solairus Aviation, called the last two to three weeks “more encouraging than discouraging” and said he’s seen business return to the 50 percent to 60 percent level.
Similarly, Flexjet senior v-p for flight operations Joe Salata has also seen business return to about two-thirds of their levels from last year. “We’ve actually been able to see quite a bit of increase,” Salata said. However, he noted it comes in comparison to earlier in the year, where operations were experiencing an uptick from 2019.
They agreed that the trough for the charter market appeared in the mid-April timeframe—more specifically, Solata estimated it in the April 12 to 15 timeframe. As people attempted to relocate and finish travel before the shutdown, March actually was fairly busy, Davidson said, but dropped off in April.
However, he said, May turned into a bit of an “odd” month, with some charter operators remaining busy and for others it was “very dead.” Davidson said he believes this “equated directly to whether people were flying on light and midsize jets and maybe super-mids versus heavy and ultra-long-ranges.” Solairus is more involved in the heavy and ultra-long categories, he said, adding this took a bigger toll on the operator.
On the upside, Solairus also saw “a very large uptick in that light and mid category of new clients and referrals,” he said. This involved a number of people new to private aviation. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before.”
In addition, bookings are improving on long-range and heavy jets of late, and Solairus conducted two such trips to Europe in recent weeks. Those trips involved a high level of operational complexity, with typically simple details such as finding ground transportation proving difficult, he said.
