How the private aviation sector in the Middle East is responding to the Covid-19 crisis
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Large-volume commercial air carriers are haemorrhaging. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said that airlines globally are staring at a potential $314bn hit in ticket sales in 2020 alone as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The very idea of thousands of individuals congregating within an airport terminal, and then hundreds of them seated next to each other on a flight is, for the moment at least, an almost incomprehensible reality within the near to medium term.
But that isn’t the case with private jets which ferry passengers through dedicated terminals and then have a maximum of 6-12 passengers seated on an airplane. “Remarkably, over 70 per cent of the demand for private jets that we saw in the past few weeks came from first-time private jet travellers who used to fly first class on commercial airlines,” says Adel Mardini, founder and CEO of Jetex.
