News Release

GlobeAir wins over commercial airlines experiencing covid-related drawbacks this summer

Europe's leading private jet provider, GlobeAir, ensures boarding times of less than 15 minutes and a complete overview of travel regulations, whilst commercial airlines can't keep up with the newest safety measures causing unnecessary stress, frustration and time loss for travellers.

While private jet companies like GlobeAir devise ways to cater for summer travels, including a 360-degree overview journey with flights and hotels, commercial airlines fail to keep passengers happy, asking for paperwork and urging travellers to pass by the airports' counters, thus undermining biosecurity. Dreams of a seamless summer of travels on commercial airlines are starting to fall as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) advises passengers to beware of incredibly long waiting times going up to an average of three hours for simple short-haul flights. On top of this, commercial airlines' 700 touchpoints, exposing passengers to contagion risks, when compared to business aviation's 20, are still a deciding factor when evaluating transport options.

Commercial airlines now advise passengers to reach airports at least three hours before a flight as COVID-19 complicates travel with its intricate web of ever-changing regulations that are still far from untangling. This summer, a mix of potentially explosive drawbacks hangs over commercial airline players. Again, top of the list are some unsolved COVID-19-related issues, such as the lack of standardised international approaches to entry restrictions and the yet unpredictable effects of an EU digital COVID certificate, which could ease health check processes from July 10 onwards, as per the announced roll-out date.

However, airports remain understaffed, flight connections are still limited in their availability, and prices are mostly higher than in the pre-COVID era. Coupled with airline staff and traffic controllers, who seem ready to call for strikes, circumstances paint a dim scenario for summer travel.

“This summer, we are likely to see a perfect storm in commercial air travel in Europe: hundreds of thousands of people desperate to travel again and many more flights added back into schedules, all while COVID-19 regulations and entry requirements are constantly changing. That means confusion on the part of both passengers and airline staff is highly probable and with it long queues and delays on departure and arrival, with very few airports that will be able to manage the situation,” says Flightradar24 aviation expert Gabriel Leigh.

As the sunny season kicks in and vaccines programmes are being successfully rolled out worldwide, hoards of tourists who have not been on holiday for more than a year have started to frantically book airline tickets to all the most typical summer destinations.

“This causes airports to fill up again slowly, but not with the same efficiency we were used to during pre-COVID times. Much longer waiting times for paperwork, biosecurity measures and health checks are making discerning travellers book a private jet to avoid being inefficient,” says GlobeAir VP sales and marketing Jonathan Berdoz.

With coronavirus' mutations threatening travellers worldwide, there is still a considerable degree of uncertainty regarding the safety of travelling via crowded airports, especially if the contact with office clerks becomes inevitably higher due to the amount of paperwork needed. On the other hand, business aviation has long shown signs of recovery, with WingX reporting that business aviation has shown pent-up demand for summer breaks as regional European restrictions are lifted. Both Spain and Greece have more business aviation visitors than pre-pandemic, with Mallorca arrivals reaching a 42% increase from May to June 2021 versus 2019, with the most arrivals from France and Switzerland, up 40% and 82% respectively.

One amongst GlobeAir's newly-acquired clients has just recently shared her flying experience as a first-class German traveller whilst on the phone with the Austrian company's customer care team and after finally deciding to switch to business aviation.

Miss Meyer reports: “It seems like airline companies are still confused. For example, online check-ins are no longer working. Many airliners enable online check-in but ask for health checks directly at the counter. There, a sort of paperwork circus begins, and so you experience queues of confused travellers whose frustration rises. Once you are on board, you get asked to fill in forms and share pens with strangers, which turns out to be outdated since June 10 and therefore unnecessary.”

At GlobeAir, this trend has been demonstrated with an increase of 27% in first-time private jet passengers since the beginning of the year 2021.

With a fast and private boarding experience on each chartered flight as well as AI-powered and real-time guaranteed pricing, not just estimates, GlobeAir is proving to be winning over commercial airlines that seem yet unprepared to face this year's high summer travel demand.