When regular flights stalled, the well-heeled hired entire aircraft

The scramble for charter air services in the second Covid-19 wave was similar to that seen during the first wave

At the height of the deadly second wave of Covid-19 in April, a very worried prominent Indian businessman asked an air charter company for an aircraft to reach Frankfurt. His daughter was having pregnancy complications, and he and his wife needed to be with her, at any cost. Until then, the businessman, an ultra-high-net-worth individual (UHNI), had been an infrequent customer of this charter company. The company offered him a 14-seater Gulfstream G550 aircraft. A nine-hour flight with four crew members would cost him about Rs 1.5 crore. This was multiple times the fare on a commercial airline for the