The upheaval in the commercial airline industry driven by the Covid
pandemic – cancelled and delayed flights, baggage woes and reduced
capacity – has resulted in more tour operators looking to charter
aircraft for their clients, says Chapman Freeborn, the global aircraft
charter specialist.
Bangkok-based
tour operator Tour Lad Fah, which operates to Georgia, Japan, South
Korea, India, and Turkey, has gone down that route, enlisting Chapman
Freeborn, part of Avia Solutions Group, to provide it with charter
solutions.
After years of pent-up demand from operators and travellers, we are seeing more enquires for passenger charters than we expected.– Andy Hudson, APAC president, Chapman Freeborn
The partnership will see Chapman Freeborn sourcing appropriate
aircraft to support Tour Lad Fah’s surge in demand for travel
post-Covid.
Chapman Freeborn’s president – APAC, Andy Hudson, said the company is
working with several, as yet unnamed, tour operators through the APAC
region, “covering a wide variety of requests from domestic flights,
International flights, and tour programmes”.
“After years of pent-up demand from operators and travellers, we are
seeing more enquires for passenger charters than we expected,” Hudson
said.
Demand, he added, was coming from Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Australia and, just recently, China, although due to just-lifted
restrictions in APAC, “the region is running around 18 to 24 months
behind the rest of the world”.
Hudson
said the capacity issues that challenged airlines during and after
Covid were caused by the lack of pilots and cabin crew to service all
existing schedules.
Andy Hudson, president – APAC at Chapman Freeborn and Arthit Thepchai, managing director at Tour Lad Fah, seal a partnership deal.
“Then, you look at the existing capacity with national flag carriers,
they just don't have the ability to free up aircraft for tour
operators.
“We have all experienced higher fares on all carriers since the
pandemic and these carriers are reluctant to offer IT fares when they
can sell full fares to the public.”
Hudson said national carriers will not have the capacity “for some
time” to offer the capacity to tour operators “as they are focused on
their own schedules”.
“We are seeing this throughout the world and as APAC is only just
coming out of full restrictions, we expect this demand [for charters] to
continue to grow.”
Hudson said tour operators are having to look at chartering in
aircraft to allow them to offer a service to their clients. “We bring
that expertise and global contacts of airlines that do have capacity and
are willing to support the tour operators. We specialise in providing
capacity solutions.”
Paul Tsang, vice president passenger solutions – APAC at Chapman
Freeborn, said, “Our passenger charter department is relatively new to
the APAC region. We are delighted to assist Tour Lad Fah, and to show
our prospective clients, not just in Thailand but across the whole
region, that we are able to find them the ideal solution when they need
us.”