Air Charter Service’s commercial jet division had another busy year in 2021 as the Covid-19 pandemic continued.
ACS's commercial jet charters of 2021
From recording a music video at 30,000 feet to evacuating nationals out of Afghanistan, Air Charter Service’s commercial jet division had another busy year in 2021. As the Covid-19 pandemic continued disrupting scheduled services, we arranged countless charters for businesses and government agencies, along with leisure flights when travel restrictions started to relax. Here’s a selection of our commercial jet charters from 2021.
Evacuating passengers from Afghanistan
Following the withdrawal of allied forces from Afghanistan, we were asked to assist a government-run operation evacuating thousands of people from Kabul. Within a short period of time, we arranged over 20 charters to carry around 4,500 passengers out of the capital city, plus a further 89 flights for 20,000 evacuees who’d already made it to neighbouring countries but needed help reaching their final destination.
In addition to this commercial jets effort, our cargo division organised flights to transport over 300 tonnes of relief goods like medical kits and food supplies into Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif.
Moving workers around the world
Our years of experience in moving employees around the world at short notice was put to the test in 2021. In August, we worked around the clock and navigated ever-changing Covid-19 protocols to arrange two urgent charters – one flying over 400 factory workers from Bangladesh to Jordan, and the other transporting 80 firefighters and 150 tonnes of equipment that were urgently needed to fight wildfires in Greece.
The following month, our expert team pulled out all the stops when a French MICE agency asked us to help fly 850 IT workers to Nice. We arranged five flights altogether for this complex request – two departing from Paris and one each from Caen, Nantes and Toulouse.
Filming a music video at 30,000 feet
We’ve organised all sorts of weird and wonderful charters over the years, so we jumped at the chance to help record a promotional music video for the world’s first-ever orbital cooking event, Space Club Kitchen. Organiser BigCityBeats needed to fly an orchestra across Germany, where they’d be filmed performing in a stationary aircraft on the runway before continuing the show in the air with legendary violinist David Garrett on the return flight.
We sourced two planes for the job: a Boeing 737-800 that could fly the group and their instruments in the cabin and accommodate the return show; and a stationary Antonov AN124 that was perfect for the scenes to be shot on the runway.
A record-breaking commercial charter
Records are there to be broken and we set a new landmark in 2021 with this long-haul flight. At the beginning of the year, our commercial jets team arranged an ad-hoc charter that covered 8,448 miles – more than a third of the Earth’s circumference. The Airbus A350-900 flew a sports team between Doha in Qatar and Monterrey in Mexico, with an impressive 16 hours and 23 minutes on board the aircraft.
Flying sports teams around the world
That wasn’t our only sporting charter of 2021 – In the USA, we regularly arrange charters for college sports teams travelling to fixtures around the country. Examples from 2021 include a last-minute return flight from Florida to Alabama for a collegiate women’s basketball team and a return flight to Massachusetts for a Virginian women’s lacrosse team with just 72 hours before they were due to play in a tournament.
We also flew athletes and sports teams to more renowned global competitions. Standouts from the past 12 months include getting a German ice hockey team to Latvia for the IIHF World Championship; finding a budget-friendly solution for an Austrian supplier transporting 34 people to Grand Prix races in Portugal and Spain; and block booking an aircraft to fly a Swiss football team to a UEFA Champions League qualifier before the exact dates and destination had even been confirmed.
Flying a supercar documentary crew
Within an hour of being asked to transport an 80-person production crew and their heavy filming equipment from London to Ibiza for a supercar documentary, our expert team had used their unrivalled contacts to source an Avro RJ100 that could easily accommodate the large group. We also negotiated several schedule changes, giving the client total flexibility and ensuring the charter went ahead without a hitch.
Keeping an airline’s schedule on track
We don’t just source commercial aircraft for single charters. In early 2021, a low-cost carrier asked us to help them lease an aircraft for five days to cover a grounded aircraft that had been struck by a flock of birds. With just three hours’ notice to prevent schedule delays, our specialist team worked late into the night to secure a Boeing B737-800 for the job.
To find out more about how we can fulfill your group charter needs, contact one of our commercial jet team today.