By NICK STEWART
With the modern business environment moving further beyond the borders of one’s local market, corporate aircraft charters represent an appealing travel option for more and more companies on the go.
“It can really be an office in the sky,” says Ken Bittle, president, Thunder Airlines Limited.
“You can have private conversations on the way to your destination, so you don’t have to worry about other passengers overhearing your trade secrets. What’s more, you can even have meals tailored to your specifications, so it really is a full-service opportunity to conduct business while you travel.”
Though group privacy can be a concern for some, the primary attractions of flight chartering lies in its ability to save time, says James Reszitnyk, flight and charter coordinator, Bearskin Airlines.
As most charter flights will provide a direct point-to-point route to the client’s chosen destination, this approach offers an opportunity to bypass the scheduled carriers’ main hubs. For example, a charter flight may allow a company to travel directly from Thunder Bay to New York City, rather than having to make a stopover in Toronto.
“If you’re able to bypass a hub system, it may take you an hour and a half to get someplace on a charter, where it would take you four hours to get there on a scheduled basis,” Reszitnyk says. “That savings of two and a half hours in an employee’s time is valued at something. You might even be able to travel there and back in the same day, where standard commercial flights might not allow for that, forcing you to incur additional hotel and meal costs for overnight stays.”
Tom Meilleur, president and CEO of NAC Air, agrees.
“A lot of customers have time and scheduling constraints, so the main attraction of this kind of thing is definitely about timing in that it allows you to get in and get out. If time is money, then it’s especially true when it comes to flights and businesses.”
Charters can also open up areas that are not accessible through conventional commercial carrier service. This is especially relevant for companies who choose to do business in any one of a number of Northern cities, such as Hearst, Geraldton and Hornepayne, Bittle says. This averts the need to stop over in a larger location, rent a car and drive to one’s destination, and is often the avenue of choice for a variety of clients with time-sensitive needs, ranging from Bell Canada to construction companies.
The potential for charter flights lies not only in taking key business personnel to a selected destination, but also in providing one’s clients with a perspective on local operations.
“In one case, we had someone whose client wanted to see how doors and windows were manufactured so we flew right into the small community that did the work,” Bittle says. “They took the tour, had a nice meal, and were back all in one day. This was a location where there was no scheduled service, so it would have been a three-day excursion otherwise.”
Pricing for charter flights can vary widely between commercial and personal applications, causing some confusion in the general public, Reszitnyk says.
Prices for charters are not settled by the number of seats used, as in conventional air travel.
Instead, the price is scaled to the distance to be traveled, as well as size of the plane being chartered, regardless of how many seats are eventually used.
Reszitnyk says this causes some confusion among clients who hear the term “charter” being used in mainstream advertising for 300-seat planes, where the cost is often spread over the broad customer base, providing a much smaller cost than is typically expected.
“We get a lot of people who think charter flights are similar to the Florida vacation charters out of Toronto. They see the ads that say those kinds of charter flights are $99, and when I explain to them that what we offer might be $20,000, they get flustered. It’s important to understand the distinction between the two.”
A short flight in a smaller aircraft can cost as low as $2,000, and can often represent a net savings when each employee is faced with $500 tickets for standard return airfare, Bittle says.
“If you’re doing it all last minute – let’s say you’ve been called into a spontaneous meeting for tomorrow regarding a big project that you’re working on – you’re going probably to be paying high rates for scheduled airfare. If you’re traveling on a charter flight, however, you’re likely to see some sort of savings, especially if you’ve got more than four people that you’re looking at transporting.”
However, he acknowledges that charters worth up to $40,000 are not unusual, with trips spanning several days over long distances carrying a potential cost of $100,000 or more.
One factor involved in pricing is the size of the aircraft being chartered, which can vary depending the carrier. Though larger firms may offer charter flights in excess of 150 seats, most charter opportunities in Northern Ontario range between nine- and 50-seat planes.
“The charter market is a great little market, and it’s a good tool to be used,” Meilleur says. “Businesses these days are much more in touch with their bottom lines, and so they really do have to balance the costs and convenience of chartering against their needs.”
