WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- As Hurricane Frances bears down on the Caribbean and Florida, business is booming for charter jet providers as executives and others find themselves scrambling for a way out of the storm zone while it's still safe to fly.
Hurricane Frances, coming only three weeks after another storm, Hurricane Charley, is expected to hit the southern tip of Florida late Friday and move north. Several Florida airports were already closed as of Friday afternoon, a full 24 hours before Frances was expected to hit the Florida mainland.
About 2.5 million residents were ordered to evacuate Thursday, the largest evacuation order in the history of the state. So it's no surprise that virtually all available commercial air seats on outgoing flights from the Caribbean and Southern Florida have been snapped up. That's where charter jet companies come in.
"Executives are saying, are we going to try and fly first-class and not get a seat because the airports are jammed, or are we going to fly in comfort in our own plane and get out of there?" New York-based Blue Star Jets spokeswoman Debbie Dickenson said, adding that business has gone up 400 percent since news of the incoming storm. The company promises to get a plane to clients within 4 hours.
This isn't the only emergency that's sparked a surge in air charters. Charter jet firms saw business spike from 20-40 percent after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Clifton Stroud, spokesman for the National Air Transport Association, an industry group that represents air charter companies.
While the number of charter firms has remained steady at about 3000 for the past 10 years, the number of hours flown has gone up. The overall air charter industry has seen growth of 10 to 20 percent from 2001, Stroud said. Besides the enhanced feeling of safety, clients also like the flexible schedules and the chance to avoid the long lines and multiple connections that are often part of typical air travel. Also, charter flights have access to more than 5,000 airports in the United States, compared with the 558 available to scheduled commercial carriers, according to Georgia-based air charter company FlightWorks. Additionally, about 70 percent of all airline passengers travel to or from the top 30 air carrier hubs.
Blue Star's business leapt 400 percent last year, the company said. "Not only are our regular customers departing the area, but we have and are seeing panicked new private jet travelers that are calling in for rescue relief from the Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, and all throughout the eastern part of southern Florida, up to Jacksonville," said Todd Rome, Blue Star's president.
"Calls are still coming in from evacuees that are living in Central and Northern Florida, and we expect to be seeing this until Monday," Dickenson said.
The company said it is flying empty aircraft in from out-of-state to fly out corporate business executives and some leftover participants from the MTV Video awards. It has at least 220 jets waiting on tarmacs in southern Florida, from helicopters and turbo props to light jet aircraft and Boeings.
Craig Siegel, managing partner of the firm's Boca Raton office, said he anticipates that the post-storm clean-up and relief efforts will require triple the number of cargo planes and air ambulances that Hurricane Charley did.
Some commercial carriers also have charter jet services, including Atlanta-based Delta Airlines' Delta AirElite Business Jets.
Blue Star isn't the only company seeing extra business. Florida-based Jet Network salesman Jaime Abrams said he was named salesman of the month for all the flights he's sold in the past few days.
"We have people that literally haven't slept in two days," he said "It's one call after another." He estimated that they've scheduled about a thousand flights in the last 48 hours. Besides flying out celebrities and executives, the company is also flying out people who normally wouldn't fly charter jet, despite the higher last-minute fares Jet Network is charging because they now have to fly in planes from other states to transport clients.
"If someone can afford to fly private they'll do it no matter what," he said.
Aside from the current situation, the company's business has increased by 1000 percent in the past 2 1/2 years he said, especially in the last six months.
Charter jets may also be siphoning off some disgruntled fractional aircraft customers, as some fractional aircraft owners who resell their shares are finding that the shares don't have as much resale value as the sellers expected.
The publisher of Fractional Ownership magazine Michael Riegel said resale value decline hasn't done any real damage. "It isn't a huge issue but has caused some people to leave the industry, but those folks have been more than offset by others who've come in." But for those who don't fly at least 50 hours a year, chartering jets is typically a better fit, he said.
