North Carolina-based fractional provider Jet It has partnered with Be The Match to help the medical nonprofit organization's volunteer blood stem cell donors travel via Jet It's HondaJet fleet to locations where blood cancer patients are being treated. While the charity typically provides airline tickets if necessary to transport the urgently needed donors, during the Covid-19 pandemic—which has seen reduced commercial airline schedules, as well as the need to protect the health of donors—it has come to lean more on private aviation to fulfill its needs.
“The donors have to remain in an essentially safe environment to ensure that the persons they are giving their blood transfusions or blood stem cell transfusions to are not exposed to some new virus or something that could take an unfortunate situation and make it worse,” Jet It CEO Glenn Gonzales told AIN.
He noted that it is a company-wide effort for Greensboro, North Carolina-based Jet It, which operates the world’s largest fleet of HondaJets. Since its programs are based on a certain number of days of aircraft usage per ownership share, Jet It owners can gift days toward Be The Match donor flights. Gonzales added that Jet It will pick up the remaining costs of these flights, including fuel and aircraft repositioning, as part of its philanthropy efforts, which have raised nearly $600,000 since 2018.
"We depend on help from partners who can connect us with private flight solutions in emergent situations when we are unable to use traditional transportation options," said Alex Zweig, general aviation flight coordinator for Be The Match. "I am excited, honored, and humbled to have Jet It as a new partner to help fill that need."