Charter Flight Routes – Charter Report 2022

For this section we take a look at all of the business jet charter flights in Asia-Pacific to determine the most popular airports and charter flight routes in Asia-Pacific between July 2020 and the end of June 2022. Whilst it is straightforward to analyze the flights of pure charter operators, it becomes an issue to separate flights operated by management companies, as aircraft owners frequently grant permission for the management companies to operate charters using their aircraft.

For this reason, the data below is presented for all business jet flights in Asia-Pacific. It’s likely that the routes and airports presented match the most popular routes and airports that are used for charter. We have however applied some logic to the data, the biggest example being what was the seventh most popular route in the region – Nowra Hill to Newcastle. Nowra Hill is the base of Air Affairs, which operates a fleet made up mostly of LearJet 35As that are used extensively on special mission flights, including target towing for the Royal Australian Air Force.

Overall, Sydney’s Bankstown (BWU) in Australia was the most popular airport for charter flights in Asia-Pacific, followed by Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM) and Delhi’s Indira Gandhi (DEL) in India. Of the top 10 popular airports, Australia had the highest number of airports with four, along with three in India, two in Southeast Asia and one in Greater China.

In the past two years as of the end of June 2022, the most popular routes in Asia-Pacific were Jakarta to Denpasar Bali, followed by Singapore to Jakarta and Mumbai to Delhi. More than half of the busiest routes either originated or ended in Southeast Asia or India.

Among the top ten popular routes, Embraer’s Legacy 600 is the most flown model, followed by Pilatus PC-24, Citation Mustang, Embraer Legacy 650 and Hawker 900XP. In terms of size category, Large, Long Range and Light aircraft are the most popular.

Although more than half (52%) of the Asia-Pacific charter fleet is Large and Long Range jets, the average flight time for all routes in Asia-Pacific is 2 hours and 16 minutes, with around two thirds of the routes taking within 2 hours and almost all routes (90%) taking less than 5 hours. The top 10 popular charter routes from mid-2020 to mid-2022 are all short-haul, with an average flight time of 1 hour and 29 minutes. Among these routes, Perth – Broome took the longest time with an average of 2 hours and 41 minutes, while Wellington – Napier and Tirusulam – Bangalore took the shortest flight with an average of 38 minutes. Due to the entry and exit restrictions as a result of the epidemic in some countries, when passengers need to fly long distances across countries or regions, they usually choose business class or first class on commercial flights and then use local charter services at the destination.

It is doubtful that Greater China, one of the major charter markets in APAC region, only has one popular route, and it is believed that the data is not complete for China registered aircraft, resulting in an underestimation of the number of flights to and from mainland China. Based on the data from Business Jet Flight Manager – a data service provider officially authorized by the Air Traffic Management Bureau of China Civil Aviation Administration – popular routes in Greater China include Beijing – Shanghai, Beijing – Hong Kong, and Shanghai – Hong Kong. Airports with the most business jet traffic are Hong Kong International Airport, Beijing Capital Airport, and Shenzhen Bao’an International.

You might notice that we didn’t include the price range for each of the popular routes as we did in the 2020 Charter Report. This is because the prices of charter flights have become opaque due to the imperfectly competitive market and the continuous fluctuation of supply and demand in the market.

Although this report mainly studies on passenger charter market, it is also worth mentioning that cargo charter plays a more important role since the beginning of the pandemic.