By Abir Ahmar and Federico Maccioni
DUBAI, March 6 (Reuters) - When Samuel Lait launched his private flights firm focused on pet travel in Dubai on Saturday, he was expecting to receive queries from owners looking to travel with their pets between the glitzy Gulf hub and the United Kingdom.
Instead, PetX Jets' inbox is full of requests from all sorts of passengers - from young adults and pregnant couples right up to the elderly - wanting to leave the United Arab Emirates as conflict engulfs the region,
forcing countries to close their airspace and stranding tens of thousands of people.
The U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran entered its seventh day on Friday and threatens to escalate beyond the Middle East, leading many people to seek to leave the region, and in turn generating a surge in prices for private jet hire.
"The original idea was to transport pets and their owners between the UK and Dubai primarily. And that's very much changed since Saturday," Lait said.
Private pet travel is becoming increasingly popular in Dubai, with several firms launching in recent years, boosted by an influx of high net-worth individuals to the Gulf business hub and offering solutions for some of the challenges posed by commercial flights, such as pet size and breed limitations as well as cargo transport stress.
Indeed, the global pet travel industry is a booming market expected to be worth around $4.6 billion by 2032, with the Asia-Pacific region seeing major growth. Recent reports suggest more than 40% of middle-aged travelers and nearly a quarter of seniors are now taking their pets with them on trips.
"We're trying to sort of move with what's happening," Lait said, adding that the company had been planning to operate its first charter service in June originally but may now launch sooner than that.
While UAE airports - usually among the world's busiest - have gradually been resuming flights, they are still operating at a fraction of their capacity, leading many residents and travellers to explore alternative ways to leave the region such as crossing the border into Oman and Saudi Arabia and flying from there, including via private jets.
"Since the escalation of tensions in the region, we have seen a significant increase in bookings ... every 10 minutes we have requests, every 20 minutes. I mean, the request is very important at the moment," said Altay Kula, CEO and founder of France-based private jet broker Jet-VIP, which operates in the Middle East.
Kula said leaving the region is currently complicated due to the airspace closures, meaning many people are "seeking solutions to leave the Middle East, particularly Dubai and Qatar," with flights from Riyadh and Muscat.
However, while the opportunity is there, challenges remain for potential customers and operators alike.
Both Lait and Kula said prices for charter flights from Dubai have leaped since the conflict began, making it hard for some clients to afford the trip.
The typical price for a Jet-VIP flight between Dubai and Istanbul was $50,000 for a light jet carrying six people and $110,000 for heavier aircraft able to transport up to 15. Those fares have now doubled to $100,000 and $200,000 respectively.
"A lot of the flights that we were offered initially were out of Oman. So the prices there were still astronomical because the demand has obviously gone through the roof," said Lait, complaining of the cost of using the aircraft. He said he is "trying to reason" with aircraft brokers and providers as his company looks to start operations.
Kula described the scarcity of slots as traffic spikes in Oman's Muscat and in Riyadh as another challenge.
"Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours just to have the authorisation to go to Oman and to pick up the passengers," he said, adding that the company is trying to operate from Dubai, but airspace restrictions make it hard to obtain slots there.
For the time being, Lait's PetX Jets is in wait-and-see mode.
"Our aim is to really try and hold out until the Dubai airspace opens and those aircraft become more in line with the prices that we've seen in the weeks and months leading up to Saturday," Lait said.
(Reporting by Abir Al Ahmar and Federico Maccioni; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
