Dallas-based private jet business grounds planes

California transplant JetSuite saw its business evaporate in late March. JetSuite, a Dallas-based private aviation company, is shutting down operations “until further notice,” according to a posting on the company’s website. It catered to upscale travelers who wanted more flexible flight schedules than commercial airlines offer.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting state of emergency around the country has caused an unforeseeable, dramatic downturn in the entire aviation industry and our business in particular,” the company’s notice said. “As a result …, we have grounded our fleet and furloughed most of our crew members.”

The shutdown was effective Wednesday. JetSuite’s notice apologized to customers planning to travel for “this sudden, but unavoidable and necessary, cancellation of all flights until further notice.”

The private jet business saw a short-lived uptick in February and early March as major airlines began cutting routes to adjust to travel restrictions around the globe to control the virus spread.

In a March 25 interview, the air travel website Skift reported that JetSuite’s business was quickly evaporating.

“The thing that we are in business to do has disappeared. Or at least 90% of it has disappeared,” CEO Alex Wilcox told Skift. “We’ve shrunk down to a minimum viable schedule, one flight per day in each market.”

The National Business Aviation Association, a trade group representing private jet companies, reported Friday that business aviation traffic took a precipitous drop from mid-March into April. It cited data compiled by Argus International.

For the week ending March 17 – before social distancing and shelter-in-place orders went into effect in several U.S. states – Argus recorded 56,154 business aviation flights. That declined to 28,899 flights the following week. By the first week in April, charter flights were down 67% year-over-year.

JetSuite arrived in North Texas in 2018 from California as one of the most high-profile additions to the region’s aviation economy in years. It was described at the time as a well-capitalized veteran of the competitive and fractured private aviation landscape. www.dallasnews.com