Private Air Charter: Efficiency In The Air Can Mean Success On The Road (Transportation Special)

Touring is a big enough challenge on land and home soil that it shouldn’t be a surprise that taking major productions across the world and navigating different customs and international guidelines — and tens of thousands of miles in the air – would add additional challenges.

“Yeah, it is a lot of the time, but we’ve got a formula for it,” says Adam Bantz, global managing director and partner at Exclusive Charter Service. Among the company’s music clients are Coldplay, whose record-setting “Music Of The Spheres World Tour” is taking up to 180 people at a time across the globe, in markets as varied as Singapore, India, Hong Kong and Seoul. “It’s about making sure everybody’s in the know on both sides – how is the luggage going to arrive, how are the 40 passes going to get printed and distributed? How are you going to get everyone onto the aircraft? What happens if air traffic control decides they’re going to put a three-hour ground hold on the entire airport? Is there enough duty time for the crew? There are so many variables that we have to micromanage.”

Bantz, whose other music clients have included Jonas Brothers, Jelly Roll, Kendrick Lamar and SZA, Playboi Carti and many others, says the job is a lot easier when the band and touring crew are seasoned world travelers who already know the ropes and to expect the unexpected.

“I mean, they’ve got a small army,” he says of Coldplay’s team. “But it’s nice because everybody who works in their team understands it. They’re very polite and it works very well.”

Demand for charter continues to increase, with what is considered a luxury by any stretch becoming more practical when needing to move quickly between continents and countries — Lollapalooza’s South American circuit, for instance. Supply remains limited as there are only so many available aircraft and pilots, which keeps prices high.

“When you’re a regular commercial pilot, you’ve got a regular route for the most part, but with the private jet industry, it depends on the size of the plane, but you could be in New York one day, Tokyo the next, Cape Town after that,” Bantz said. “They run these guys ragged, but that’s the nature of the business. A lot of them will drop out, but you do find a bunch that stick with it for years. I know a pilot that has been doing it for 40 years, but this is what he wants to do and was his dream.”

Bantz admits that a regime change in the White House, which has publicly led to uncertainty for anyone with a green card or less than permanent residency in the United States, has touring clients concerned about leaving or returning to the country. Any additional uncertainty is potential kryptonite to someone who is tasked with making sure everyone — and everything — arrives when it needs to, and safely. It’s a nearly zero-margin error proposition.

“Safety is everything,” Bantz said. It sounds obvious, but corners being cut or risks being taken can lead to disaster. “I will never, ever do anything or suggest anything or put anyone into an aircraft that I wouldn’t get in myself or put my own mother in. A lot of charter brokers out there that don’t have those kinds of values and just do the pump and dumps where they can just get somebody in and move on to the next ones.”

Exclusive Charter Service is the charter partner for TAG, otherwise known as The Appointment Group.

Byron Carr, president of TAG’s global touring department, says the company puts additional resources and service into complicated travel factors like private charter, which means working together as more of an aviation concierge rather than just as a jet broker.

One trend in private charter is mindfulness toward sustainability. TAG is able to present options to tour managers and artist teams, letting them choose how they want to tour and knowing their carbon footprint, from flight to hotel.

“Then the clients can make the best-informed decision on what sustainable carbon partnership program they prefer,” said Carr. “That’s a big passion point and an objective of ours at the moment, being able to book as quickly as we can, as economically as we can and providing all the data, including carbon reporting.”