Short haul charter flights
Discussion
I'm looking at a holiday for 8 people in France.
Some of the places are considering are not very close to one of the main airports, so would entail a flight, followed by a train journey and / or long car journey. There do appear to be smaller airports nearby, however.
Is it possible to charter a plan for for this sort of trip? We don't need a luxury jet or anything fancy, just something that could get us and our luggage safely to/from a regional airport to save a lot of hassle?
Maybe I'm being far too optimistic about what this might cost, but I'm sure someone on here knows the answer!
Some of the places are considering are not very close to one of the main airports, so would entail a flight, followed by a train journey and / or long car journey. There do appear to be smaller airports nearby, however.
Is it possible to charter a plan for for this sort of trip? We don't need a luxury jet or anything fancy, just something that could get us and our luggage safely to/from a regional airport to save a lot of hassle?
Maybe I'm being far too optimistic about what this might cost, but I'm sure someone on here knows the answer!
craig1912 said:
Junkers 52 for £2000 an hour would be my choice. That really would be a cool way to arrive.
I looked into just this sort of matter about 10 years ago when trying to get a small party from Kemble to Oban
It was certainly do-able but the pricing would have to include the plane running empty twice, once back to base after the outbound run and again running from base to pick you up on another day.
The quote I got for a plane to seat 5 was well north of £3k and, as I said, that was over 10 years ago.
It was a lot cheaper, although nowhere near as much fun, to fly scheduled from Bristol to Glasgow and then hire a minibus
It was certainly do-able but the pricing would have to include the plane running empty twice, once back to base after the outbound run and again running from base to pick you up on another day.
The quote I got for a plane to seat 5 was well north of £3k and, as I said, that was over 10 years ago.
It was a lot cheaper, although nowhere near as much fun, to fly scheduled from Bristol to Glasgow and then hire a minibus

How much baggage do you need to take? While it’s fairly easy to seat eight passengers it can be difficult to carry much in the way of luggage at the same time. Depends how far you’re going but a couple of Piper Navajos / Chieftains wouldn’t be horrendously expensive, probably much cheaper than a single 8 seat Hawker.
Think of a number. Double it.
8 people plus any meaningful amount of baggage won't fit in a chieftain/navajo. You really need a King Air 350, and there aren't (m)any around for charter in the UK any more.
If you're going for anything more than 2-3 days you'll also find yourself having to pay for a load of empty flying. Depending on routes chosen i'd be suprised if you had much change out of £12k (London to somewhere in France, 4hrs flying per day, twice - 8hrs at £1500/hr including all fees = £12k) . And that's being generous.
8 people plus any meaningful amount of baggage won't fit in a chieftain/navajo. You really need a King Air 350, and there aren't (m)any around for charter in the UK any more.
If you're going for anything more than 2-3 days you'll also find yourself having to pay for a load of empty flying. Depending on routes chosen i'd be suprised if you had much change out of £12k (London to somewhere in France, 4hrs flying per day, twice - 8hrs at £1500/hr including all fees = £12k) . And that's being generous.
Obviously "it'll be fine" - but what happens about life assurance when you do this?
I'm going back a long way, but my wife's family all have PPLs and it was a question on our mortgage life assurance - something like: "will you be flying other than as a passenger on a scheduled service"?
I'm going back a long way, but my wife's family all have PPLs and it was a question on our mortgage life assurance - something like: "will you be flying other than as a passenger on a scheduled service"?
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