Apertus Aviation, the Hong Kong-based charter services company, has introduced a new programme which allows its clients to fly unlimited times within 60 days.

Ringo Fan, the company’s founder and MD, says that the idea behind the new programme is that it would give companies 60 days of unlimited flying, within a specified region.

“We had these clients who said: ‘Look, we are concerned about availability of planes, it’s [the Corona virus] probably going to start hitting Europe, start hitting the US,” says Fan “So we want to make sure we can still secure planes, we want to make sure that we can still run our business for the next 60 days, as there are so many places we need to go, and so many deals that still need to get done.”

Fan says that there are some limitations in the programme, most notably where the clients are planning on flying to, and how many passengers the flights would carry. Once this information is known, Apertus would then be able to price the programme package.

Typically, those zones would be within four hours flying time of the client’s home base. Fan gives an example, saying that, so far the company has signed up two European customers for the plan, who are free to fly all over Europe.

Although the first to clients to sign up to the programme are European-based, the company is planning on rolling the programme out worldwide. Apertus is currently working on signing up the first Asian-based programme members.

“We are expecting some Asian customers to sign up soon,” says Fan. “We have a few in the pipeline with whom we are currently in discussion, especially around the size of aircraft needed.”

There are some differences been Europe and Asia that make it harder to source aircraft in Asia, and Fan says that the company needs to be smart about managing the supply of aircraft in Asia.

“The availability of planes in Asia is different, so we probably need to get a few clients on board to actually bring a plane from Europe to Asia to materialise these few deals.”

Part of the reason that it is getting harder to source aircraft to be used for flights, including to Chinese cities, is the ongoing threat from the Coronavirus. Many operators and owners do not want their aircraft to visit China in case the aircraft needs to be deep cleaned, or its crew need to be quarantined afterwards.

“It’s getting more difficult,” says Fan. “But there are still a few opportunities, so we are hoping that we can still grab those opportunities to help a few of our clients to get around.”

Fan says that the current issues facing business aviation in China haven’t had much effect on the company’s business. People are still flying domestically on business jets in China, although this has fallen a little.

“We are doing a reasonable amount of domestic flights within China, it’s not hitting us that badly,” says Fan. “Unless we are talking about international flights, like Hong Kong to the US, or China to the US. All of those have been cut down obviously, but we didn’t do too many of those anyway.”