Wealthy switch to private jets to avoid coronavirus

In April, John Matthews’ private jet business, AirX, went into a terrifying nosedive. After coronavirus lockdowns, monthly charter requests fell from almost E100m to just E200,000. “There was pretty much nothing. Terrifying may be an understatement,” said Matthews, chairman of the Malta-based private jet operator. His company faced a grave threat to its survival from the spread of travel restrictions across the world.  But since then, a rebound in demand has given hope to Matthews and his competitors. Although their sector styles itself as “business aviation”, little of the new demand has come from corporate travel, which is still largely frozen after conferences were cancelled and meetings migrated online. Instead, it is an influx of leisure customers — unable to travel commercially or unwilling to risk mixing with crowds — that has helped pick up the slack and allowed the private jet market to avoid the worst of the crisis afflicting large airlines. June figures for the commercial sector are yet to be published but airline trade body IATA expects them to be grim. In May, commercial passenger demand was down 91.3% compared with a year ago. By contrast, private flights dropped 70% year on year in April but were down only 28% in June, said aviation business monitoring group WingX. The recovery has continued into the first three weeks of July, with global private aviation down just 19% from its pre-Covid levels as more European countries lifted travel restrictions. NetJets, one of the biggest private jet companies and a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, said demand was back to 85% of normal flying levels by late June after dropping to 20% in late April.<br/>