Pandemic changing private jet’s popularity
‘People got a taste for flying luxury’ due to convenience
DALLAS — On JSX’s recent first flight between Dallas and Austin, one traveler was hoping to make the flight part of his weekly commute. Another group of passengers was visiting the state’s capital city for a birthday trip to stay with friends.
On the way back to Dallas, several groups were coming to see the Monday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles.
Even with 35 commercial flights a day between Austin and the two commercial airports in North Texas — DFW International Airport and Dallas Love Field — everyone on the 30-seat plane decided they wanted to skip the traditional airline experience, skip the security lines, skip the parking garage and skip the recommended two hours early arrival time.
At Signature Flight Services, the private terminal JSX is using while it builds its own at Dallas Love Field, customers can show up 30 minutes early and walk right on to the jet sitting on the taxiway outside.
“People got a taste for flying luxury during the pandemic, and they don’t want to go back,” said Alex Wilcox, a former JetBlue executive who is CEO of Dallas-based JSX, which operates 30-seat flights in Texas and the California region. “It’s really the convenience because no one wants the hassle of the airport.”
While commercial aviation is still ailing from the COVID-19 downturn, the world of private and charter flying has never been hotter.
July was the busiest month in modern history for the business aviation category, a mix of corporate flying, private jets and charter services, according to data from business aviation data firm Argus International. There were 302,317 takeoffs and landings among private business aviation operators in July, bigger than even 2019, which was a banner year for the industry.
At Dallas Love Field, private and charter jet traffic for the first nine months of 2021 was 16.5% higher than it was in 2019.
The private flying sector has rebounded so fast from the COVID-19 downturn that there is a shortage of airplanes for purchase worldwide. NetJets and
other major players in the fractional private jet sales space have cut off sales because there is too much demand.
What’s even more startling, said Travis Kuhn, Argus’ vice president of market intelligence, is that the business aviation sector surge is occurring amid a major dip in corporate flying.
The private aviation world was buoyed last summer by a wealthy class of eager travelers who had been stuck at home for months and decided to rent private jets and turboprop planes to vacation at outdoor destinations and beaches. But there was a flood of commercial traffic to those areas too.
Overall, business aviation
traffic was still down in 2020, although both business and commercial travel saw a major rebound in early 2021.
Commercial air travel’s recovery hasn’t been without hiccups. Airlines worked hard in 2020 to show that sitting in close proximity to other passengers didn’t pose an increased danger of catching COVID-19. And this summer, airlines were rife with weather delays and a record number of unruly passenger complaints that sometimes forced planes to be turned around on taxiways and unboarded.
Meanwhile, a booming stock market and stability among high-paying white-collar jobs have led to considerable wealth
growth among the upper class.
“That record wealth gain on the stock market pushed more people into private aircraft,” Kuhn said. “And once you see people step up, you won’t see them step down.”
By all accounts, 2020 was just as tough a year for private flight operators as it was for the rest of the aviation industry. Traffic dropped 20% to 30%, led by a massive halt in corporate flying. But private and business aviation came back aggressively in early spring of this year, just as COVID-19 vaccines began to be distributed to a wide group of Americans and dropping infection rates led more areas of the country to begin reopening.
JSX, along with its sister company JetSuite, moved its headquarters from California to Dallas in 2018. In 2020, it launched a hybrid model.
It pulled seats out of a jet normally intended for 65 passengers to accommodate only 30. Carrying 30 passengers also pushes it just up against the limits set by the FAA of selling tickets on scheduled flights without being a full commercial airline like Southwest Airlines.
JSX is now flying directly from Dallas to Houston,
Las Vegas and Austin, along with some charter flights to private resorts and golf courses. It also flies to about a dozen locations in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California.