Super rich had anticipated the lockdown, Children recalled from private jets to the country

Earlier this month, the fear of Covid19 started increasing and there was speculation that India’s airspace could be locked down anytime.

The landing of the Falcon 2000 jet at Mumbai Airport on March 16… two girls also took off from the plane… Both girls belonging to the business houses of the metropolis came from London. Both study in different universities of Britain, who were first brought to London Airport and from there they caught a flight to Mumbai. His parents arranged for him to be brought. You will be shocked to know the expenditure on this … 90 lakh rupees was spent. These two girls are among the few who returned home in a period of two weeks between March 8 and March 21.

Let me tell you that the fear of Covid19 started increasing earlier this month and it started speculating that India’s airspace could be lockdown anytime. In such a situation, the rich of India started arranging luxury private jets to bring back their children studying abroad.

On March 21, the outbound flights stoppedJust two weeks after this, the Indian government banned commercial flights coming from outside on 21 March. By then, at least 102 private chartered flights from the United Kingdom and Europe (countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland etc.) had landed in India in these two weeks. Dassault Falcon 2000, Bombardier Challenger Series and Hawker Business Aircraft were used for such flights. All these flights were arranged by the same aviation firm.

Apart from this, 31 business jet flights were transported to the elderly during these two weeks from Tier 2 and Tier 1 cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Most of them were parents of businessmen. Jetsetgo Aviation Aggregator founder Kanika Tekriwal said that only one to three people were on 85% of these flights. JetSetGo is known as the ‘Uber of Skies’ of India. Tekriwal’s company has an effective 21.7% hold in the Indian private aviation charter market.

Inquiries about private flights increasedIn the few days before the lockdown came into effect, inquiries about private flights had increased up to seven times. These inquiries were being done on behalf of the wealthy people of India, who were worried about bringing back their children from abroad. This private aviation charter market suffered a major setback with massive flight cancellation at the time of lockdown.

Tekriwal’s firm JetSetGo had to cancel the previously scheduled 346 luxury jet flights in the 21-day lockdown period. This has caused a loss of business of around Rs 100 crore to the company. Apart from this, two more private aviation charter companies confirmed this trend on condition of anonymity. There was a flood of bookings and inquiries earlier and cancellations after lockdown.

Loss of 28 million every dayTekriwal told, “In the lockdown, there is a loss of Rs 2.8 crore every day from zero operations, while our expenses have actually increased during this time.” Maintenance of aircraft is an expensive process for their owners. Jetsetgo is experiencing the same experience in India as other operators around the world. On demand jet provider ‘Private Fly’ also got a lot of bookings and inquiries from the super rich section of America and Europe first. Everyone was vying to move before the restrictions on commercial flights.

As the coronavirus epidemic hit the world, jet providers had to increase their expenses for every hour of operation compared to earlier. These expenses had to be increased due to provision of additional sanitation. International and domestic flights are banned in India until at least 14 April. After that the situation will be decided after further assessment.