As we all know, since 2020 the world and everything that was our reality until then has been modified and affected, as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The aviation industry is no stranger to this situation. Moreover, the closing of frontiers, the different lock-downs and the interruption of most of the economic and social activities had a strong and negative impact on the air transportation industry. Airlines were practically without activity for a long period of time, a situation that led them, in many cases, to eliminate certain routes, stop operating in some countries or, in the most serious cases, even disappear.
But as the popular phrase goes, every crisis can be a great opportunity, and that phrase describes the phase that business aviation is going through.
The sector’s recovery continues at a steady pace. In first place is the United States, where growth, as measured last May, was 166% (Source: WingX). Much slower, but no less steady, is the growth recorded in Europe, where figures show an increase in activity of 30%.
In Latin America, business aviation is a developing tool and with the advent of the pandemic, companies in the industry are investigating how passenger behaviors are affected.
Flapper, one of the leading companies in the region, has recorded and grouped into 5 basic points the trends in passenger behavior during the pandemic:
Urgency: flight requests are becoming more and more urgent as people are not planning as far in advance.
Remote Destinations: Increase in requests from small and remote cities as many people are choosing to relocate to their rest homes.
International Reach: due to the broad reach of the companies in the region, in addition to the lack of commercial connections, in many cases as a result of the elimination of certain air routes.
Cargo: business aviation is increasingly used for regional cargo transportation.
Health Tourism: perhaps the most striking point, vaccination became one of the new motivations for travel.
In addition, despite travel bans and restrictions in individual countries, private aviation travel is perceived as a safe air travel alternative, offering far fewer points of contact during travel than commercial aviation.
For all these reasons, it is believed that the trends in the short and medium term are oriented towards three fundamental points:
Increase of new participants in the market: this means the approach to this mode of transportation to people with the capacity to afford it but who for some reason have not yet experienced it.
Migration from large urban centers: it is estimated that the pandemic would lead many people to choose to reside in smaller places far from large cities.
International charter flights: due to the lack of supply in commercial aviation, there has been an increase in demand for international destinations.
Now it only remains to wait and see how the sector develops in the context of the new normality.