With social-distancing concerns causing most of the public to continue avoiding traveling by commercial aircraft as the new year begins, more and more travelers have begun to explore options for flying via private jet.
Even while most people placed travel plans on hold during 2020, travel advisors noted significantly increased interest from their clients about flying private. While demand in most segments of the travel industry bottomed out, private jet charters saw huge increases. Air Charter Service (ACS), the world's largest aircraft charter broker, reported a 49-percent increase in leisure inquiries and a 14-percent spike in bookings during 2020.
Andy Christie, Group Private Jets Director at ACS, has just released some of the company's predictions about the trajectory of private jet travel for this year. ACS foresees private jet travel booking volumes rising back up to 2019 levels in 2021, with somewhat of a shift in the composition of its clientele. While private business travel, particularly harshly affected by the pandemic, is predicted to reach 85 percent of its 2019 levels, an increase in leisure travel bookings should compensate for the deficiency.
Christie said that private travel will receive more customers during 2021 due to ongoing disruption and limited availability of flights from commercial carriers, which he anticipates will be a long-term issue. Concerns about hygiene and social distancing relating to commercial air travel, he said, will be a shorter-term problem, due to the rollout of vaccines.
ACS experienced a 25-percent increase in new customer bookings throughout 2020 and expects to see a further 25-percent upswing in the numbers this year. While more people will be opting for private air charters in 2021, Christie said, ACS expects that these new clients will be booking fewer flights per customer than in pre-pandemic times.
"We expect this larger customer base will be traveling less on average next year compared with the average customer in 2019, taking smaller numbers of longer trips," Christie said. "Following months of lockdown, people can't wait to travel again and are wanting to go on trips for a longer duration to make the most of their time in a destination. The introduction of remote working arrangements is also likely to contribute to the increase in the number of people traveling for longer." Therefore, on balance, the company expects the total number of bookings to roughly equal those seen in 2019.
Christie prophesied that Mexico and the Caribbean will continue to draw American leisure travelers, having been among some of the first to reopen to international tourists amid COVID-19. While land borders with Mexico are closed for nonessential travel, air travel has gone on unrestricted and many Americans in need of vacation turned their sights southward.
"We see this interest in travel to Mexico and the Caribbean continuing in 2021, as we predict that international travel may remain a little slower this year," Christie explained. "Travelers will prefer taking trips closer to home and more familiar destinations for their first vacation, before reaching further afield."
ACS also expects that the influx of customers who are new to private aviation will drive increases in carbon offsetting practices. While the technology does not yet exist to make aviation carbon-neutral, carbon-offsetting technology does exist in other industries that don't have the funds to install it. Carbon credit systems offer a way to fund the adoption of green advancements on projects that would otherwise lack the investments they require.
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