Private aviation is at a crossroads following a busy summer for leisure travel and executives are waiting to see if business travel rebounds in the fall.
Firms are moving to capture as much of the new market as possible by scaling up, adopting advanced scheduling and pricing systems, and enhancing safety protocols. As months of lockdowns eased by the end of summer, the desire to move around eventually surpassed fear of the virus for some and the wealthy began traveling again. Relying more on private planes, travel plans were shaped around quarantine rules and airlines were largely avoided for those who could afford it.
Firms that couldn't meet 2019 numbers were still coming close as Jet Linx CEO Jamie Walker told Business Insider that his company's June was only 15% off from the year prior. Traffic then increased in July and August to 10% down from last year. September traffic is slated to be down only 16%, dropping to 13% in October, Kuhn predicts, with help from the new flyers.
In July, Jet Linx acquired Meridian Air Charter and 23 managed aircraft, establishing it as the country's second-largest aircraft management firm. Walker navigated Jet Linx through the 2008 economic recession andDespite a near-90% traffic loss in March and April, Jet Linx doubled sales for jet cards – prepaid commitments where flyers lock in favorable rates – sales this summer with first-timers accounting for 90% of new sales from March to July, Walker said.
Directional Aviation is also aiming to combine that technology with a premium charter offering, called FXAIR. The organization's new on-demand charter wing will use second-hand Flexjet aircraft to provide key tenets that its leadership says is missing from the current charter experience – "stability, consistency, and safety."