Demand for chartered flights rising

Deer Jet, the largest business jet operator in Asia, said that as novel coronavirus outbreak spreads across Europe, market demand from Chinese passengers who can afford to fly from Europe to China on chartered business jets has been vigorous. New business opportunities have emerged for the sector, company officials and analysts said.

The company, a subaffiliate of HNA Group, the conglomerate headquartered in Haikou, Hainan province, said that with few commercial flights available, some passengers who normally take first-class seats on commercial flights have turned to chartered business flights. That gives them more flexibility and privacy and less contact with other passengers.

Inquiries about chartered flights from Chinese who live in Europe surged in March. Passengers are mainly entrepreneurs, Chinese immigrants and students who study abroad. Charters are seen as presenting less risk of infection now that Europe has become the global epicenter of COVID-19.

On Wednesday, a chartered Boeing 787 operated by Deer Jet took off from London, headed to Shanghai with a stopover in Geneva, Switzerland. The Dreamliner, which can carry 242 to 330 passengers in a normal commercial configuration, is roomily set up with 40 seats. Even with a one-way ticket going for 180,000 yuan ($25,350) per seat, they were soon sold out.

Deer Jet said it also needed to take the round-trip costs into consideration, given that the plane flew empty from China to London.

"We will need to follow the government's policy to see if we can arrange more chartered flights from Europe to China, but the demand is high," Deer Jet said in a written reply to China Daily.

A large number of international commercial flights has been canceled between China and Europe and the United States. Passengers have to transfer multiple times to arrive at their destinations.

Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines will cancel a group of international flights that connect China with the US and Europe in late March for epidemic prevention and control reasons, the carrier said on Tuesday.

In the past week, one-way ticket prices from the US to China surged an average of 136.8 percent over the previous week, and prices from Europe to China soared 173.5 percent over the same time, according to Qunar, a China-based online travel agency.

Hu Sheng, a Chinese visiting scholar in the US, planned to stay for six months. The rapidly growing number of confirmed US COVID-19 cases increased his concerns about becoming infected, so he chose to return after only three months.

He flew back on Monday, traveling from Los Angeles to Shanghai via China Eastern, spending 26,000 yuan for the one-way ticket with an economy class seat. Ticket prices for the flight－more than three times the normal cost－are listed by the Ctrip online travel agency at the same or higher prices through late April.

"Since the outbreak of the epidemic in China, some foreign carriers halted flights to China, and Chinese carriers also reduced their operational capacity. Now, the supply of international flights between Europe and China is falling severely short of demand," said Lin Zhijie, an aviation industry analyst.

The number of international flights undertaken by Chinese airlines is around 25 percent of normal volumes, and the number of domestic flights is lower than 40 percent of normal volumes, according to Vari-Flight, a Chinese company that provides air-data services.

With more people turning to business jets, Deer Jet said it still expects the sector to have a bearish performance this year, despite new opportunities.

The new business is not expected to offset the earlier drop in flight volumes in China and continuous expansion of the contagion worldwide.