STUDENTS FLEEING U.S. PAY $20,000 FOR A PVT JET SEAT

BEIJING/MONTREAL: Chinese students from wealthy families are persuading their parents to pay tens of thousands of dollars for seats on private jets to get home.

The alternative, in a world of locked borders and grounded commercial planes, is 60-hour flights with multiple transit hops over the Pacific. Jeff Gong, a lawyer in Shanghai, asked his daughter, a high school student in Wisconsin, if she wanted 180,000 yuan ($25,460) as pocket money or a ticket on a private flight home.

“My daughter begged me to get her back home. She said, ‘No papa, I don’t want the money, I want to go home’,” he said.

US-based Chinese students are scrambling to get home as US infections top 55,000 while new cases in China - where the flu-like virus emerged in humans late last year - have fallen to zero.

The sense of urgency is further heightened by the dramatic cutback in flight capacity. On Tuesday, 3,102 out of 3,800 planned commercial flights to and from China were cancelled, according to data provider VariFlight.

Even the window for chartered flights is closing. Beijing has banned chartered flights from overseas. Hong Kong and Macau have blocked transit flights.

US-based Air Charter Service can fly passengers from LA to Shanghai on a Bombardier for 2.3 million yuan or $23,000 for a spot.

“We have arranged a number of private jets travelling from the US to China repatriating Chinese nationals with routes including New York and Boston to Shanghai, San Jose to Hong Kong and Los Angeles to Guangzhou,” said Glenn Phillips, a PR and advertising manager at Air Charter Service.