Austrian air taxi operator GlobeAir is promising boarding times of less than 15 minutes and a complete overview of travel regulations; it says that commercial airlines can't keep up with the newest safety measures, causing stress, frustration and time loss for travellers.

Dreams of a seamless summer of travels on commercial airlines are starting to fade as IATA advises passengers to beware of long waiting times going up to an average of three hours for simple short haul flights. On top of this, commercial airlines' 700 touchpoints, exposing passengers to contagion risks, when compared to business aviation's 20, are still a deciding factor when evaluating transport options.

Commercial airlines now advise passengers to reach airports at least three hours before a flight, as COVID-19 complicates travel with a web of ever-changing regulations.

“This summer, we are likely to see a perfect storm in commercial air travel in Europe: hundreds of thousands of people desperate to travel again and many more flights added back into schedules, all while COVID-19 regulations and entry requirements are constantly changing,” says Flightradar24 aviation expert Gabriel Leigh. “That means confusion on the part of both passengers and airline staff is highly probable and with it long queues and delays on departure and arrival, with very few airports that will be able to manage the situation.”

As the sunny season kicks in and vaccines programmes are being successfully rolled out worldwide, tourists who have not been on holiday for more than a year have started to book airline tickets to all the most typical summer destinations.

“This causes airports to fill up again slowly, but not with the same efficiency we were used to during pre-COVID times,” reveals GlobeAir VP sales and marketing Jonathan Berdoz. “Much longer waiting times for paperwork, biosecurity measures and health checks are making discerning travellers book a private jet to avoid being inefficient.”

With mutations of the coronavirus threatening travellers worldwide, there is still a considerable degree of uncertainty regarding the safety of travelling via crowded airports, especially if the contact with office clerks becomes inevitably higher due to the amount of paperwork needed. On the other hand, business aviation has long shown signs of recovery, with WingX reporting that business aviation has shown pent-up demand for summer breaks as regional European restrictions are lifted. Both Spain and Greece have more business aviation visitors than pre-pandemic, with Mallorca arrivals reaching a 42 per cent increase from May to June 2021 versus 2019, with the most arrivals from France and Switzerland, up 40 per cent and 82 per cent respectively.

One among GlobeAir's newly-acquired clients has just recently shared her flying experience as a first-class German traveller while on the phone with the Austrian company's customer care team and after deciding to switch to business aviation.

Miss Meyer reports: “It seems like airline companies are still confused. For example, online check-ins are no longer working. Many airliners enable online check-in but ask for health checks directly at the counter. There, a sort of paperwork circus begins, and so you experience queues of confused travellers whose frustration rises. Once you are on board, you get asked to fill in forms and share pens with strangers, which turns out to be outdated since June 10 and therefore unnecessary.”

At GlobeAir, this trend has been demonstrated with an increase of 27 per cent in first-time private jet passengers since the beginning of the year.