During the month of October 2021, Skylark Aviation Expert’s teams specialized in aircraft charter for the MICE industry organized the travel of a group of nearly 3,000 people going to a corporate seminar organized in the Middle East. For this, aircraft rental solutions were implemented to ensure fast and efficient transportation from all over France, Switzerland and Belgium.
THE MISSION
The charterer is a company based in France that wishes to celebrate its business performance and good financial results by organizing a large-scale event in Jerusalem. The participants are employees and partners located in France and Europe.
As part of its activities as an aircraft charter broker, Skylark Aviation Expert’s teams were mandated to develop an air transportation plan, including aircraft rental solutions with crew, maintenance and insurance and all the services surrounding their implementation. This is known as chartering.
THE NEED FOR TRANSPORTATION
The specifications provided for the transportation of 2,600 people by special flight from Lyon Saint Exupéry, Bordeaux Mérignac, Marseille Provence, Nantes-Atlantique and Paris Roissy Charles de Gaulles (Paris CDG). Given the short duration of the stay and the richness of the event’s program, the organizer had to ensure that the flights arrived at the same time. Thus, within only two hours, all groups had to land at their destination before being transported by land to the main conference venue where the majority of the festivities took place. For return flights, the same requirement in terms of flight departure times was required.
On the other hand, all flights had to be non-stop to meet the dual constraints of the seminar schedule and the air transportation budget. Indeed, a stopover on a large aircraft is expensive: kerosene consumption during the ascent phase, airport fees, handling of the aircraft on the ground, passenger care…. On the other hand, a stopover adds duty time for the flight crew and results in more compensatory rest, as the charterer is responsible for the aircraft’s downtime. All this while providing a degraded travel experience for passengers, since they would have had to endure a longer travel time. However, the question of the stopover was well posed, not because of the aircraft’s range, but because of the requirements of the destination country, which stipulate that all airports of origin must be previously checked by the competent authorities. These security measures were applicable to most airports in the French regions.
After elaborating the different eligible alternatives, our teams put into perspective their financial impact and the constraints in terms of comfort they imposed on passengers. The simplest solution was to provide flights with a stopover, but this would have resulted in an increase in the air transport budget and a significant deterioration in the travel experience. It was therefore decided to implement a specific security protocol for the airports involved.
Skylark Aviation Expert’s consultants, who specialize in setting up customized private flight solutions for companies, had to take all these parameters into account. In addition, the constraints of the other parties involved had to be taken into account:
- The opening hours of the airports served,
- capacity of the airport facilities,
- the working hours of the airline crews,
- parking of aircraft at destination,
- the line maintenance of the aircraft during the stopover,
- timing and handling of flights by air traffic control,
- health requirements for passengers and members of the organization,
- the respect of security measures by the different participants,
- and of course the expectations of the client and the event’s organizing agency.
THE RECOMMENDATION
A large number of combinations were proposed and presented to the charterer. They all included a mix of passengers carried on privatized aircraft and tickets booked on existing scheduled flights. Some options emphasized the quality of onboard comfort (business class or seats with screens, for example), while others emphasized reliability by using larger aircraft in smaller numbers. This reduced the risk of operational contingencies (problems obtaining clearances, departure or arrival slots, technical problems, etc.) but reduced the flexibility of the organization for the client, who could less easily match transportation needs with the capacity of the private flights deployed.
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROJECT
The result of the work of Skylark Aviation Expert’s charter brokers was a solution that allowed all passengers to be flown directly to their destination in the shortest possible time and within budget.
“A private jet rental solution… for almost 3,000 passengers.”
The final solution was to lease 11 wide-body aircraft under charter from several French, European and Israeli airlines. With a range of aircraft capacities from 171 to 376 seats, this offered the charter client a unique flexibility to place aircraft according to the evolution of the passenger list.
Up to a few days before departure, we were able to adjust flight capacities according to the number of check-ins at each airport. 97.4% of passengers had their departure airport wishes met, while the number of empty seats was ultimately limited to last-minute no-shows.
