Emirates is launching an intriguing new on-demand regional charter service. While it’s probably out of budget for most of us, it’s an interesting concept.
Continue reading: Emirates Launches Regional Charter Service With Phenom 100 Aircraft
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Smart move.
There is tremendous demand from senior-level executives based in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to fly out to remote airports in the region, especially to Saudi Arabia for day-trips or meetings. These airports are often underserved by regular commercial traffic, if at all.
It's weird to me that Emirates has no private charter options between a Phenom 100 (tiny by any standard) and A319 (enormous by private jet standards). At least in the US, most private jet travel is done on Citations, Challengers, etc -- sure, there are some huge G450/550/650 and tiny HondaJets, etc out there, but the bread and butter for NetJets, XO, Wheels Up, etc is the ~8-11 seaters with midcon/transcon range.
Reminds me of the Lufthansa private jet program (that would connect you seamlessly to secondary cities from Munich and Frankfurt). That program officially ended last year because the market was, apparently, too small. Lufthansa's program was backed by NetJets. I don't see how Emirates can make this work without a similar partner....but I'm amused by the idea of charter customers paying money so that pilots in training can add hours to their logbooks. 🙂
Would think so, if the planes are painted as Emirates and it is operating as an Emirates flight.
This sounds like an ill-thought out idea. The aircraft is kept at their training hangar, so it first has to be flown from there to DXB due to security/immigration issues. This process starts the clock ticking for your pilots. The aircraft must also return to the training hangar every night. If you charter this, you're essentially paying for two dead legs and, due to pilot hour limitations, you can only fly it for up to roughly 2hrs according to their briefing. Given the enormous amount of capacity within the GCC from various airlines, who in their right mind thinks this is worth the cost of what I can calculate at 15,000AED/hr? Emirates management does a lot of thngs right, but then they always have these types of things that make you question the intelligence of them or whether it's just dumb-luck that got them to where they are today. I'd love to know the "interest" beyond speculative pricing from Qatar's Executive jet team. More likely this will be shut-down by Christmas and a few Phenom 100s will pop up on the broker listings!
Yes, but they are at the Flight Training Academy, which isn't connected to DWC. Refer to Google Maps and you'll understand. This is the reason for the dead legs to DXB. Otherwise, I'm sure the cost would skyrocket further when accounting for parking charges to store an aircraft at the already full DXB apron.
The article says they depart from DWC rather than DXB.
I see what you mean about the Flight Training Academy being next to DWC, but having no taxiway to DWC (although they may have now built one, or use the road!)
But if this is indeed Instructor+Trainee (shades of JSX) they may take off from FTA and land at DWC - don't trainees need to clock a certain number of rotations as well as hours?
P.S. Even if they were using DXB, everything there is owned by the same state, and don't assume that Transfer Pricing requirements are the same as in the USA!
Finally those jets will find a good use, because to train pilots that was not a good purchase for Emirates
Initially, it was per passenger. My friends and I minted 6 HON Circle members back in May 2010 by flying two days between MUC and ZRH.
Afterwards, LH changed the rules and it was 10,000 miles per plane.
Ultimately, they had to discontinue the service in totality.