Convenience, comfort and time – they are precious commodities for business travelers. And yet the commercial flights high flying executives rely on are usually devoid of all three.
You don’t have to travel frequently to know that flight delays are at an all-time high. Throw in the pain of security lines, overbooked flights and limited schedules, and it’s no wonder that the Federal Aviation Administration expects general aviation hours, or private flying, to increase 59% by 2020.
As part of the fastest growing segment of the aviation industry, business aviation–private jet charter in particular–has undergone a major overhaul in the past decade, becoming the saving grace of business travelers.
Initially, travelers wanting to charter a private jet could do so fairly easily if they were located in a high-traffic region, such as the New York City area.
But if a client based in Columbus, Ohio needed to get to Detroit and a jet was not readily available, the situation got messy. Operators would sub-broker until perhaps a third broker could get his hands on a plane. All three brokers, of course, would charge for their services. The jet also would likely have to be repositioned in order to get to the client in Columbus–racking up another fee.
“There wasn’t a consistent product in charter,” says Martin M. Hazan, President of Private Jets VIP, a private aviation solutions provider. “It was just very scattered, mostly mom-and-pop type operations.” Read the rest of this entry »
