Group Charter Air Travel: Flying Together

In the winter of 1891, coach and doctor James Naismith, seeking an indoor activity for male collegians in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented a game he called Basket Ball. A year later, physical education teacher Senda Berenson introduced a modified version of basketball to Smith College – an all-women’s institution. In 1896, the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford played the first intercollegiate women’s game, two years before Naismith would bring the men’s game to the University of Kansas, where it would become famous.

However, professional basketball in the U.S. proved far more elusive for women than for men. Players such as Cheryl Miller and Lusia Harris soared in college, the Olympics and international play, but had no professional outlet at home. It took the support of the men’s National Basketball Association (NBA) to found the first sustained women’s professional league, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), in 1997.

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Until recently, though, WNBA players lacked one amenity available to male pros – consistent charter air travel. After regular-season games, WNBA athletes had to wait in security lines, cram themselves into cramped aircraft seats and handle delays eating into practice time. As players became more high-profile, they faced attention from fellow travelers who were not always friendly. In May 2024, the WNBA announced it would offer charter service to teams for all games, allowing players and staff to leave commercial air headaches behind.

Very few possess the height and athleticism required for pro basketball. However, even if you’re not the next Caitlin Clark or A’ja Wilson, you may be able to benefit from the same air travel service – group charter. If skipping airline encounters in favor of group charter travel intrigues you, read on.

Getting Together

In the aviation industry, group charter typically refers to a flight with 20 or more people – too many to fit on most business jets. While some group charters end up needing the types of jets commonly flown by commercial airlines, such as the Boeing 737, there are a wide range of smaller models – turboprops that fit about 30 passengers, twin-engine regional jets and many more.

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Who is riding in those planes? Movie and TV productions, sports teams, music groups and humanitarian organizations, among many others, including the White House press corps. They’re typically looking to fly at times and to places that can be tricky to mesh with “scheduled service” air travel – i.e., commercial airlines traveling at set times from set places.

“There are group charters flying prisoners all the way up to flying heads of state. The gamut is huge in between,” says Paul McCluskey, vice president of commercial aviation for Hunt & Palmer USA Inc. “It’s a little bit of everything with a very broad scope.”

Group charter can be an option for entities who need to offer corporate shuttles – transportation services to and from work for employees. It can also be convenient for companies looking to reward high-performing individuals with lavish trips to exciting destinations. In addition to allowing precise choice of destinations and flight times, group charter lets passengers forego security lines and X-ray machines in exchange for faster methods such as hand searches of baggage and individual screening.

“Scheduled service air travel does not provide the best experience. Flight on a carrier is no longer the glamorous suit and tie experience it used to be,” says McCluskey. “Our job is to make the air travel part of the experience and not just the nasty party at the beginning and the end.”

Governments may use group charter for all sorts of scenarios – from moving inmates to prisons and repatriating migrants to transporting politicians to far-flung locations. Corporations may need to rotate workers for offshore oil and gas rigs, move staff to and from cruise ships, take participants to splashy product launches and more. “With group charter, you travel at your schedule rather than someone else’s,” says Paul Travis, client services manager for Alto Aerospace Ltd. “You’re able to achieve something on a time scale that you couldn’t with commercial flights.”

U.S. vs Europe

While group charter is available on multiple continents, there are regional differences. In Europe, group charter airlines are much more common than in the U.S. Among other reasons, major European cities are typically closer to popular vacation spots and residents usually have more vacation time than in the U.S. Europeans tend to take longer vacations that often cross international borders but are also more likely than Americans to emphasize affordability over flexibility when making travel plans.

Celebration on Private jet. Photo credit: EXTREME-PHOTOGRAPHER, iStock / Getty Images Plus.

As a result, Europe has a thriving network of tour operators who offer package holidays combining flights, hotels and other services – a model that fits well with frequent group charter flights. Charter airlines are able to offer travel options for specific seasons rather than year-round, taking advantage of Europe’s network of smaller regional airports near both major cities and tourist destinations.

Also, most European airports require flights to secure landing slots in advance; in the U.S., landing slots aren’t common at most airports. This flexibility has allowed budget-friendly scheduled service airlines to serve both business and leisure customers in the U.S., blunting potential demand for group charter. “In Europe, there are a lot of carriers that must have route authorization to fly from place to place, as many destinations are outside the boundaries of the European Union,” says Pete Ganabathi, director of network and operations planning for CommuteAir. “You don’t see that within the U.S.”

In Europe, travel companies offer group charter options for fans looking to support teams at tournaments such as the Euro Cup or Champions League. “A tour operator or travel agency sends a request to brokers for a large, wide-body aircraft in order to transport fans,” says Yiannis Christodoulides, director at charter broker Zela Jet. “The plane comes in the morning and departs after the game.”

In the U.S., devoted fans certainly look for private jet options for major sporting events, but when it comes to targeted group travel, they have other options. For Super Bowl LVIII in February 2024, American Airlines added extra flights between Kansas City, Missouri (home of the Kansas City Chiefs) and Las Vegas. “You can fly into airports 15 to 20 times a day in the U.S., as there are no governmental limitations restricting carriers from doing so,” Ganabathi says. “In Europe, that’s not the case, since most airports are slot controlled or capacity regulated.”

Sporting Life

It’s not just sports fans seeking group charter – as mentioned before, major teams prefer flying private. However, while professional sports organizations exist on all settled continents, there is another source of demand in the U.S. – college sports. Though universities around the world offer intramural sports, more than 500,000 student athletes in 1,100+ institutions of higher education in the U.S. competing on an intercollegiate basis make college sports big business.

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In many U.S. states, a college football coach is the highest-paid government employee, though basketball and baseball coaches hold their own. Student athletes are expected to score big on game days while still making it to class on time. Alumni who make large donations to college sports programs are sometimes transported to games by grateful athletic departments.

The recent reshuffling of major athletic conferences has only expanded the need for air travel. The Big 10, once a primarily Midwest operation, now includes the University of Oregon and the University of Southern California, among others. The Atlantic Coast Conference has expanded to Stanford and Southern Methodist University. The further the reach of the conference, the more travel time required.

CommuteAir provides transportation for many teams in the Big XII athletic conference, ensuring that athletes, coaches, donors and others make it to games and back in comfort for sites ranging from West Virginia to Texas to Kansas to Arizona. “We have hot ovens on our aircraft,” Ganabathi says. “We have leather seats that are 18 inches wide and adjustable headrests.”

Rolling the Dice

Group charter and scheduled service air travel service isn’t totally separate in the U.S. For example, CommuteAir also operates scheduled flights for United Airlines (which holds a minority stake in the company) using Embraer ERJ 145 regional jets, a bit smaller (and more utilitarian) than the Embraer E170 it uses for charter business. This arrangement is not uncommon in U.S. aviation.

Industries that have a constant need for group charter may find the best fit with other operators who are familiar with both scheduled service and group charter. CommuteAir is currently investigating the possibility of operating group charter flights for casino markets such as Laughlin, Nevada and Gulfport, Mississippi that have fewer scheduled service options than larger markets such as Las Vegas. “We haven’t operated a casino flight yet, but that’s one of our options,” Ganabathi says.

Size Matters

One caveat with group charter is that, depending on the size of the aircraft required, you may be limited to large commercial airports rather than more numerous smaller business airports. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires airports to be certified to accommodate scheduled service aircraft, and larger aircraft can physically be more difficult to handle for business airports than commercial airports.

Hunt & Palmer recently arranged a group charter flight for a band headed to a performance at a private arena in Branson, Missouri – not close to a major commercial airport hub. McCluskey helped obtain permission for the 72-seat aircraft to land in Branson. “You can apply for a waiver to use an airport on a one-off basis, but that’s rare,” McCluskey says. “Part of our expertise is identifying the airports that can be used.”

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Not Too Much Money, Honey

For many group charter flights, large entities such as corporations or universities pick up the tab. In Europe, charter airlines often wrap ticket costs into larger packages. However, if you want to pull together a group on your own, you may find the price more affordable per head than individual private jet travel.

As an example, Ganabathi recently investigated an inquiry about flying a group of 60-70 people between two large Texas cities for a sporting event. He estimated that the price per head would be close to that of a first-class round-trip ticket. “For a large group, group charter is more expensive than flying economy, but often less expensive than first class and much more pleasant,” he says.

Goal!

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In the summer of 2026, North America will host the biggest professional sporting event in the world, the (men’s) FIFA World Cup. Sixteen cities across three countries (Canada, Mexico and the U.S.) will host 104 games among 48 teams over six weeks. Add to that the need for soccer devotees from other continents to reach North America in the first place, and you’re talking about a lot of air travel.

Those in the broker side of the U.S. aviation industry hope demand from the World Cup will boost the supply of aircraft available for group charter. “There are only a few dedicated charter airlines in the U.S. right now, and legacy carriers don’t always have spare availability. We have more business than there is supply,” McCluskey says. “We’re hoping that the World Cup will provide more entrants in the space and that companies already involved will provide more capacity in the future.”