Air Charter Service (ACS) has said that since the start of 2020, it has seen a much more diverse spread of airports used in the supply chain for automotive charters, with the rise of the electric vehicle resulting in the company arranging charters from or to more than 100 new airports.

Dan Morgan-Evans, group cargo director at ACS, said purchases of electric vehicles have more than doubled in the past two years and production has obviously been ramped up to cope with this fresh demand.

"The EV market has not only led to major manufacturers opening up new plants specifically for EVs, but also a huge amount of new suppliers in locations that we previously haven't flown from, so we are seeing a large number of new destinations popping up for our just-in-time automotive charters," he said.

Morgan-Evans noted that in a normal year, ACS would arrange charter flights to around 350-400 airports for automotive charters, including many familiar destinations, multiple times.

But, he pointed out that since 2020, when EV production really started to step up, the company's charters have flown from and into more than 100 new airports that weren't even on the map for traditional car manufacturers beforehand.

"To put that into perspective, that figure of new airports is higher than the entire destination network of major airlines such as Air India, SouthWest Airlines and China Airlines," the group cargo director at ACS added.