The difficulties of airlines in Venezuela have had a great benefit.
While many foreign commercial lines have reduced or suspended their operation to Caracas altogether, another business flourishes: that of private jets.
The private jet route between Caracas and Miami is the fastest growing in Latin America.
And it was the second fastest growing in the world, after the one linking New York with Nice, on the French Riviera.
So says the consulting firm Knight Frank in its recent annual report titled “Wealth Report,” which documents the spending trends of millionaires around the world.
The report includes the latest information available, in this case for the year 2013.
But in Miami, industry spokesmen say the trend has not abated.
“In the last five years, the demand in general for private jet charter flights to Caracas has quadrupled,” businessman Andrés Arboleda, president of Privé Jets, tells BBC Mundo in Miami.
It is one of several companies of “brokers”, a kind of travel agency that connects clients with private planes, which find great demand from Venezuelan clients.
“The route from Miami to Caracas is the most requested,” he says.
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Borrowed aircraft
About 25 private charter flights depart from South Florida every week to airports in Caracas and Valencia, Arboleda said.
The private jet industry is having a good time.
“In addition, unlike what happens in other countries in the region, Venezuelans who have a private plane still tend to lend it to friends,” he says.
So between private jets chartered and private planes traveling with their owners or their friends, about 75 planes from Venezuela are arriving in Miami weekly.
The profile of the traveler is well defined.
“They are mostly Venezuelan businessmen who moved with their family to Miami, but still have their business in Venezuela. They leave for Caracas on Sunday or Monday and return to Miami on Friday,” Arboleda tells BBC Mundo.
It is a clientele that elsewhere would use the business class services of commercial airlines.
But in Venezuela, disputes between the government and several foreign airlines, which among other reasons allege difficulties in repatriating profits in the face of the strict exchange regime prevailing in that country, led in recent years to some of the airlines to stop traveling to the South American nation.
Or to reduce their flights, so that the difficulties that many Venezuelans have in obtaining tickets to travel abroad have been widely documented.
the silence of Caracas airport
Arboleda says that one of the manifestations of this situation that they perceive is given by the calls of people who say they are interested in getting two or three families together and among all renting a private plane, given the difficulty in getting space in the airlines.
However, he says, most stakeholders are discouraged by the price.
New York, Moscow and the Côte d’Azur are also great destinations for private jets.
Jet-set style travel will never be cheap.
“A ticket on a commercial airline can cost $1,000. By contrast, a one-way private plane flight between Miami and Caracas costs about $20,000. If you divide the cost between six passengers, it would be about $3,300 per person,” says Privé Jets spokesman.
It indicates that in some cases, private jets arriving in Miami from Venezuela bring families emigrating to the United States. “They call us saying they need to come with their dogs and their cats.”
But for the most part they are members of a private business class that, despite residing with their family in the United States, still have large economic interests in Venezuela.
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Other routes
A ticket on a commercial airline can cost $1,000. By contrast, a one-way private plane flight between Miami and Caracas costs about $20,000.
Andrés Arboleda, Privé jets
The world’s millionaires are offering unusual activity to private jet operators in different parts of the world, says the Knight Frank report.
In 2013, according to the same document, the busiest route for private jets was from Moscow to the French Riviera.
Other high-traffic routes include New York to Miami and New York to Los Angeles.
And according to the document, it is expected that in the future China will become another center of great growth for this exclusive industry.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2015/03/150319_economia_jets_privados_venezuela_lf
