Air Charter Service has experienced a huge increase in demand for charters across southeast Asia, especially when compared to pre-pandemic levels as it currently stands at more than double that of 2019.
APAC regional director Stephen Fernandez says: “Across southeast Asia, travel has been made significantly easier over the course of this year as the last few countries that had some form of Covid restrictions are now allowing people to travel more freely. This has meant an influx of enquiries for our offices in the region, and the booking figures for southeast Asia are far higher than we have ever seen.
“For the year so far we have seen a 166 per cent increase in enquiries and bookings on the pre-pandemic levels of 2019 for our passenger charter divisions. Part of our enhanced growth can be attributed to our Singapore office, which only opened its doors just prior to Covid, but we have also seen huge increases across the region, in particular in Philippines, Cambodia and Malaysia.
“This increase is significantly higher than the market average, with WingX's latest figures confirming a 58 per cent increase between January and September across the region. To put things into perspective a little, the US's growth compared to pre-pandemic over the same period, is just 11 per cent; although the private aviation market in southeast Asia is smaller than some of the rest of the world.”