JAKARTA, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- High-end consumers in Indonesia have decided to travel out of towns and abroad using charter planes or private jets during the surge in COVID-19 cases for various reasons.
"There are travelers who make trips for medical purposes and holidays among other reasons," said the chairperson of the Indonesian Travel Agent Association (Astindo) Pauline Suharno.
The high mobility of Indonesian people who wanted to go out of their towns and abroad has made travel agents busier, as seen from their ticket sales since June 2021, she told CNBC Indonesia recently.
Stefanus Gandi, director of PT Indojet Sarana Aviasi which is an Indonesian company engaged specifically in the rental of private aircraft, also said the transportation business using private jets has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"During this pandemic from last year, the increase has doubled as compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic," Gandi told local media in Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Thursday.
Gandi said that the increase in users of private jet services operated by his company also occurred during the implementation of the policy on community activity restrictions (locally abbreviated as PPKM).
"During the current PPKM, we are going smoothly. Maybe because people feel that private journeys are safer and so far we can fly to anywhere that commercial flights may not be able to do so," he said.
In addition to being safer, the reasons people use private jet transportation services are time efficiency and limited flights on commercial planes, Gandi added.
"Most of guests who use our services are passengers who have budgets, of course. Based on our records, those who travel for business trips from the beginning of the pandemic are still traveling until now."
During the pandemic, his company served more domestic than international flights, he said, adding that about 90 percent of their traffic is domestic, and the remaining 10 percent is abroad.
According to him, Bali is his company's crowded destination which becomes the most favorite place for domestic and foreign users of private jets to make vacations and business activities.
He said his company operates a number of jet aircraft of various types including the Hawker 400 with six seats, the Hawker 800 that carries eight passengers and the Legacy 600 which has 13 seats.
Meanwhile, Sony Faisal, director of private jet charter operator CeoJetset, also said currently in Indonesia there are many super-rich people who spend money on making classy trips.
Faisal said his company understands the needs of the super-rich, one of which is the need for speed. It is common to find long traffic jams that can take hours on the streets of big cities like Jakarta.
"Three hours are valuable for them from their houses to airports," he told Warta Ekonomi daily recently.
Faisal further said his company is preparing breakthroughs in the form of rental packages to reach more markets.
If businessmen and politicians can be accommodated with business packages, the company would prepare event and holiday packages to reach the family market, he said.
"We have indeed made a breakthrough to break the paradigm that private jets are expensive. We have made many breakthroughs so that private jets are more affordable for many people."
Although event and holiday packages offer lower costs to passengers, by far the best-selling packages on the market are business packages, he said, adding that by relying on a business package, CeoJetset can earn a net income of up to 1 billion rupiahs (about 70,135 U.S. dollars) per month.
So far, the super-rich who usually use private jet services come from businessmen, politicians, government bureaucrats and artists. Enditem
