Boom time for private flight

When the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the globe in March, much of the aviation industry ground to a near halt – as anyone who’d been planning to fly commercial this year can attest. At the same time, there were still plenty of people who needed to move, whether for emergencies such as medical evacuations and repatriations from countries closing their borders, or for essential work that needed to go on regardless. With commercial aviation all but grounded, and with fears rampant around being in a confined space with even a handful of strangers, private aviation was suddenly in demand in new ways, and by a whole new segment of travelers.

The result has been that while commercial traffic has been running at around 15 percent of its normal levels, private flights have seen upwards of 70 percent of their typical activity. That’s not to say that private aviation hasn’t suffered, and many operators made it clear that although new opportunities and interest had emerged during the pandemic, prices were down alongside demand from