Private jet charter costs from Saudi Arabia soar after Houthi attacks
Demand from wealthy travellers leaving kingdom pushes up prices more than 50%, brokers say
The cost of chartering a private jet to get in or out of Saudi Arabia has soared after Houthi strikes on the country closed Riyadh’s main airport and led to commercial airlines cancelling thousands of flights.
Demand for charter flights from wealthy travellers or executives seeking to leave has pushed prices up more than 50 per cent, operators and brokers said, while the cost of war-risk insurance has risen dramatically.
Several operators have also pulled services from the country amid this month’s violence, pushing prices even higher.
One flight last week leaving from al-Qassim airport north of Riyadh to Geneva on a Bombardier Global 6000 — a 14-seater long-range aircraft — sold for €94,000, compared with a price of about €60,000 before the closure of Riyadh’s main airport, according to Alexander Graham at private flight group Luxe Jets.
“Prices are going up because we’re losing availability, so for people that are willing to do it, it will be a bit more expensive,” he told the FT.
Flights in and out of Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport have been halted since October 10, following a wave of deadly assaults by Houthi rebels. The airport was due to reopen on Sunday, according to a notice issued by the kingdom’s civil aviation authority. However, the regulator has not yet provided an update, and operators are expecting any restart to be slow.
More than 5,500 departing flights from Saudi airports have been cancelled since the strikes began, according to aviation analytics group Cirium. Lufthansa and Italy’s ITA both suspended services to the country, while carriers such as British Airways and Air France had already postponed flights.
People leaving the capital on private jets are chartering them from al-Qassim, a smaller airport more than 200 miles away from the city, according to four jet executives. Some people who are unable to afford private jets have travelled to neighbouring Bahrain or Qatar to catch flights, according to people on the ground.
Local Saudi airlines are still running commercial services from al-Qassim to other destinations including Dubai, Cairo and Bahrain, according to data from Flightradar24.
Several western businesses have contacted flight brokers to explore relocating their top teams stationed in the city, either to Dubai or back to their home markets, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations.
But there had not been an evacuation of the scale seen earlier this year when tens of thousands of people left Dubai and the United Arab Emirates in the immediate aftermath of the onset of the Iran war, they added.
Iran fired almost 3,000 missiles and drones at the UAE during those strikes, a far greater number than have been fired at Saudi Arabia. The kingdom also has a smaller population of western expats than the UAE, which is the region’s dominant finance and trade hub.
Charles Robinson, founder at EnterJets marketplace, said charter flights to Europe from Saudi were selling for up to $150,000, while even those to the UAE were going for $30,000-50,000.
“Fewer operators are willing to fly into and out of affected airports, and those who remain in the market know it,” he said. “Some are applying their own premium . . . simply because the demand is there and the competition isn’t.”
A “meaningful number” of customers flying privately were “trying to [get to] a lower-risk part of the region”, before connecting on commercial flights back to Europe or the US, he added.
Jet operators are also diverting empty planes into Saudi Arabia to pick up passengers who want to go to Europe, Graham said.
On top of higher prices, travellers are being hit with higher charges for “war risk” insurance, brokers said.
“If war risk insurance is needed, that’s when it starts to get significantly more expensive,” said Toby Edwards, co-CEO at Victor. He said larger planes, which can seat about 18 people, could be charged an extra $20,000, while the cost for smaller 8-10 seaters could be $8,000.
Robinson at EnterJet said war risk costs were adding up to 10 per cent to some flights across the region, and “for flights in and out of Saudi directly that premium is slightly higher” — though not at the levels seen early in the Iran conflict, when insurers were charging $50,000 for covering a single journey.
However, demand for flights into and within the wider region remains strong. Edwards added: “The missile strikes don’t seem to have had an impact on the wider region. We had a new client fly Antalya [in Turkey] to Dubai with his family for a week’s holiday. Another regular client flew to Kuwait on Friday, then also into Dubai yesterday.”