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I think it really depends on what you expect from your crew. Let's say you have a rotating pool of four 1-2K hour pilots, with 2 on deck for each flight on a we

I think it really depends on what you expect from your crew. Let's say you have a rotating pool of four 1-2K hour pilots, with 2 on deck for each flight on a week-on/week-off schedule. Skip the 'attendant', have the crew fuel up, and I think you could probably get away with $200K/yr for the personnel costs, depending on taxes/benefits. Obviously the number, length, and complexity of flights would have a big impact as well. For 1 or 2 round-trip domestic flights per week, it should be doable. Source: Had a friend who worked on several private flight crews that operated like this. Edit: They mostly worked with clients in the $100MM/yr range, who tended to treat their staff like garbage and consequently had high turnover. Über-rich lurkers, YMMV.

jonnathanson 9y ago
Interesting. The calculus is certainly different among billionaires (personal experience sample size = maybe 3 or 4, and no, sadly, I ain't one of 'em myself!). The billionaires I've met, who by and large own and don't rent, have what I'd call three distinct use cases for private air travel: business, social, and family. Business travel can range from more or less daily to at least 3x per week. Family travel is less frequent and generally limited to whole-family trips, but said trips can and do occur a lot more frequently when you have those means. And then there are what I'd call social trips -- a bucket into which I'd lump anything from charity events, to fundraisers in DC, to golf tournaments, to spur-of-the-moment trips to the house in Aspen or the Hamptons. Said billionaires, if asked, would consider most of the above to be business trips, because their business lives never stop, and some measure of business is usually baked into most trips -- even if it's a quick stop at one city to conduct business before heading on to the vacation spot.

jonnathanson 9y ago

Interesting. The calculus is certainly different among billionaires (personal experience sample size = maybe 3 or 4, and no, sadly, I ain't one of 'em myself!). The billionaires I've met, who by and large own and don't rent, have what I'd call three distinct use cases for private air travel: business, social, and family. Business travel can range from more or less daily to at least 3x per week. Family travel is less frequent and generally limited to whole-family trips, but said trips can and do occur a lot more frequently when you have those means. And then there are what I'd call social trips -- a bucket into which I'd lump anything from charity events, to fundraisers in DC, to golf tournaments, to spur-of-the-moment trips to the house in Aspen or the Hamptons. Said billionaires, if asked, would consider most of the above to be business trips, because their business lives never stop, and some measure of business is usually baked into most trips -- even if it's a quick stop at one city to conduct business before heading on to the vacation spot.