Use of private jets grows with younger people and women in Europe

Stratajet couple

The application of technology to private aviation has seen an increase in the number of younger people and women using private jets in Europe.

While private aviation is typically the reserve of male business executives, the introduction of booking platform Stratajet has opened up the market to an increasingly tech-savvy and younger private flier.

Among Stratajet’s customers, the most active segment is the 25-34 age group, which conducts almost a third of all searches (32%), while over two thirds (69%) of searches are performed by customers aged 44 or younger, significantly bucking the industry average of passengers being over 40 years of age.

Stratajet uses technology to guarantee the fastest way of booking a private jet at the best price. Its search engine is capable of returning accurate costs of a huge range of aircraft in seconds, all of which can be booked instantly, giving customers access to private jets at the click of a button.

Stratajet’s data also shows an increasing trend towards EU users browsing on the go. While usage of the Stratajet booking service continues to grow across all platforms, mobile searches for flights have grown at more than twice the rate of desktop usage.

As a percentage of all searches, those performed on smartphones has grown by almost a third, to the extent that half (49%) of users are now searching for flights on mobile devices, whereas those conducted on desktop has dropped by 8% (from 59% to 51%). Searches on tablet devices have also seen a small decrease (13% to 12%), in line with wider industry e-retail sales figures which show a decrease in tablet usage compared smartphones.

Stratajet sees that women searching for private jets doubled in 2016, removing the idea that private jets are only used by men. Women represent a faster growing segment for flight searching, with the number of searches by female customers increasing by over 50% more than men.

“As consumers become increasingly time-poor, they require instant access to a range of services and private jet travel should be no different. So it is encouraging that this data demonstrates a much-needed shift in the mentality of the private aviation industry.”

Jonny Nicol, founder & CEO of Stratajet said: “As consumers become increasingly time-poor, they require instant access to a range of services and private jet travel should be no different. So it is encouraging that this data demonstrates a much-needed shift in the mentality of the private aviation industry.”

“The adoption of technology, especially via smartphone devices, will continue to lift the industry’s barriers of inaccessibility, in turn increasing the scope for more and more people to find that private jet travel is well within their means. As this happens we fully expect smartphones to become the go-to means for consumers to access private aviation, further changing the way people travel,” added Nicol.