January 25, 2025
After an early March 2020 private jet surge as Covid-19 shutdowns took hold, next week marks the downturn that would prelude record highs.
This month marks the beginning of the dive that led to the Covid-19 surge in demand for private jet travel.
While a lack of airline flights and the desire for social distancing before a vaccine helped fuel private jet flying to record heights in 2021 and 2022, it is easy to forget it wasn’t a straight line.
Covid-19 shuttered big swaths of the travel industry, including closing hotels and borders.
On March 14, 2020, the Center for Disease Control issued a 30-day ban on cruise ship operations in U.S. ports.
Cruise ships would not sail from the U.S. with passengers again for more than a year.
Offices, universities, and schools closed.
For private aviation, the first half of March was pretty positive.
HNWs were arranging ad hoc charters to bring their kids home from college.
There were relocations to second homes and such.
In fact, private jet flight departures began to plunge below 2019 numbers on March 17, 2020.
On that date, there were 6,813 departures.
A month later, on April 12, 2020, that number was down to 1,054 departures (chart below).
Yet, on this date five years ago, there was optimism that private aviation could avoid a downturn.
European operator GlobeAir released a study showing that the risk of COVID-19 coronavirus is 30 times lower on private jets.
Source: WingX
There are 700 touchpoints exposing passengers to the risk of contagion on a single commercial flight.
There are only 20 such interactions when using business aviation.
Like many, Globe Air saw an early surge in March, with flying up 27% year-over-year.
Private aviation flight providers were getting ahead of the curve.
Jet Linx launched a 90-day jet card to entice new flyers.
Flexjet said Constant Aviation had treated its fleet of more than 160 aircraft with MicroShield 360 – an antimicrobial shield.
It would also announce a ferry program for its pilots.
Air Partner launched a program called Air Partner Protect.
It provided emergency evacuation assistance to vetting charter operators for health and cleaning protocols.
NetJets emailed customers to advise them on cleaning procedures and increasing travel restrictions.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has created a constantly changing landscape at NetJets. We will continue to issue operational updates as they become available, but we wanted to take a moment to provide reassurance that we are taking all necessary precautions to mitigate the spread of the virus and continue to keep our owners and our employees safe,” the world’s largest private jet company said.
It would also use its fleet to fly over 500,000 Covid antibody tests from China to the U.S.
Next week, five years ago, VistaJet unveiled month-to-month leases providing a short-term dedicated access solution.
By the end of the month, Wheels Up announced on CNBC a program to donate meals via Feeding America in partnership with leading sports stars.
By September, the program had supported nearly 50 million meals.
A survey conducted March 17-19, 2020, with subscribers of Private Jet Card Comparisons, found that 33% of respondents expected private flying to increase compared to 2019; 30% said flight hours would remain flat, and 37% forecast a decrease.
Despite 39% canceling trips, 36% said they had made additional trips privately because of Covid-19.
Source: WingX
With the stock market down, we asked, “What will most likely influence your private travel in the next six months?”
Nearly eight in 10 respondents (77%) said, “reducing potential exposure to Covid-19 Coronavirus” versus 22% who cited “concerns about personal assets or company sales and profits compared to the cost of flying privately.”
In March 2020, the National Business Aviation Association and other key trade groups, in a letter to Congress, highlighted private aviation’s role as a lifeline to small communities and for emergency relief.
The letter was addressed to the leaders of both houses, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and Charles Schumer.
The letter stated, “As you consider a potential relief package for FAR Part 121 air carriers, we request that those same programs be made available for companies conducting operations under FAR Parts 135 and 91 subpart K (fractional operators). Programs that would provide the most support to our industry include medium to long-term liquidity assistance and relief from air transportation excise taxes.”
It continued, “With scheduled airlines serving only 10% of our nation’s 5,000 airports, air carriers that provide charter services under Part 135 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, and fractional providers operating under Part 91 subpart K provide connectivity to thousands of communities with no other air service.”
The CARES Act was signed into law on March 27, 2020.
Soon, there would be FET-free jet cards.
However, on this date, five years ago, the worst moments were still directly ahead of the industry.
When all was said and done in March 2020, ARGUS Traqpak reported a 31.7% decline in North American private jet flight hours.
As borders shuttered, the European Business Aviation Association published updates on who could travel where.
After the strong start to March, GlobeAir reported government restrictions were forcing it to curtail operations.
ARGUS forecast a 67% drop for April 2020.
It would be worse than that.
WingX data showed that just over 26,000 business jet flights operated worldwide in the first two weeks of April 2020.
That was 79% below the same period in 2019, or under 1,900 daily flights.
NetJets said it was reducing the number of new jet deliveries.
Since then, it has signed options to order up to nearly 2,000 private jets from Bombardier, Embraer, and Textron.
By October, private jet flight activity was climbing to within 15% of 2019 levels.
This past week, there were over 70,810 flights or just over 10,000 per day.
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