Air Charter Service's Empyrean jet card offering has had a buoyant first quarter of its 2022 financial year in which it saw a 64 per cent increase in new customers and a 170 per cent increase in card revenue across its global offices. With the booming private jet market seeing a scramble for availability, the company's jet card accounts guarantee capacity for its clients' flights and allow access to additional travel services.

Empyrean jet card manager Tim Rees says: “The unreliability of scheduled services since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought a lot of new customers into the private jet market, and operators who offer jet cards are struggling to cope with the demand because they only have access to their own fleet. As a brokerage, we aren't limited to a single fleet; we have access to thousands of aircraft around the globe, so can always find aircraft availability and have not had to pause jet card sales as some of these operators have. This means we are now seeing many clients opting for one of our jet card accounts as a way of guaranteeing aircraft availability and rates.

“Off the back of this we've seen strong revenue growth in the Middle East and Asia with a far higher spend than in the first quarter of 2021, but leading the way was the US, where we saw considerably higher than double last year's figures, with Europe also up by a similar amount.

“I don't foresee the jet card trend changing in the near future and am greatly excited to see how this growth continues, especially as private aviation is on such an upward trajectory post-pandemic.”