The H1N1 flu pandemic is boosting demand for private travel on charter planes, as many executives seek to avoid crowded aircraft, Bloomberg reported today.

The charter business has revenue of about $33 billion a year worldwide, and business is booming, according to large England-based operator Air Charter, whose revenues increased an average of 32 percent each month from May to August.

Since April, more than 254,000 people have been infected with H1N1 and 2,800 have died, according to the World Health Organization. Infections have risen tenfold since June, and fatalities have doubled in the past month, Bloomberg reports. The growing fear is leading to more chartered flights.

“Swine flu has certainly increased traffic,” Rob Dore, a director at Jet Direct Service Ltd., based in Shoreham-by-Sea, England, told Bloomberg. “Predominantly it’s the largest corporate clients. They are concerned about the well-being of their staff from a commercial, as well as a moral, standpoint.”

Concerns now are for the major airlines, which cannot afford a reduction in travel by their highest-paying premium customers, who account for more than 50 percent of revenues on the bigger carriers’ long-haul flights, analyst Penny Butcher told Bloomberg. The airline industry as a whole lost more than $6 billion in the first half of 2009 due to the recession and H1N1 flu concerns, and now travel in first class and business class has declined 21 percent, according to International Air Transport Association estimates.

When severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) took hold in Asia in 2003, executives requested private jets, according to the report. Air Partner plc CEO David Savile said he expects the pattern to repeat itself.

“When SARS struck, people wanted to use a private jet,” he said. “They didn’t want to sit in an enclosed space with others.”