Rebecca Jones: The world’s outbreak of COVID-19 has brought an unprecedented disruption to daily life for people around the world now living under some form of quarantine or lockdown.
And while the number of those affected by the pandemic continues to climb, it does come amid examples of solidarity and generosity.
One of them is from Thomas Flohr, now he’s the founder and chairman of Vista Global, which is a private air travel company. He’s offered to put his company’s fleet of aeroplanes at the disposal of the government and medical organisations to repatriate citizens, transport equipment, doctors and specialists during this pandemic.
And I’m delighted to say that Thomas Flohr is here with us now. A very generous offer, I wonder what the response has been?
Thomas Flohr: Hello Rebecca, the response has been very good and actually about 48 hours after the initial offer we now also include our XO brand bringing the availability of all our 115 aircraft to this initiative. It’s not only the aircraft, it’s really the global infrastructure and the expertise and technology to make sure that in these difficult times the permits and the logistics are under control.
RJ: Presumably as well from your business point of view it does make sense for your planes to be flying rather than parked on the tarmac?
TF: Well we continue to support our clients for their very urgent travel needs. But what we really have seen is that the uptake of these opportunities has been very inspiring for our entire team and so to that extent to help governments and medical institutions for repatriation or transporting very critical medical goods is something we are very excited about.
RJ: You I think are also providing the crew, what safety precautions are you taking for them, and what’s been their response?
TF: Well the crew has been very inspired by this program obviously very early on with the outbreak of the Coronavirus we have put in place very strict safety and security measures to make sure both our customers and the crew are safe but what it really allows us because we own all our 115 aircraft and we own the entire global infrastructure we are controlling the entire end to end process of these flights hence it’s all under our control and all the safety and security measures we are putting in place are to the standards we want them to be at.
RJ: Thomas Flohr I’m afraid time is tight and we’ve got to leave it there but really good to talk to you thank you.
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