8 ms·

I don't get private jets. Even if I had Bezos money, I still don't understand why a private jet would ever work out an objectively better experience than flyin

I don't get private jets. Even if I had Bezos money, I still don't understand why a private jet would ever work out an objectively better experience than flying first class except in very limited circumstances with lots of people. You'd need to have air crew, storage, fuel, maintenance and I would assume (I know nothing about how this works) a raft of permissions and clearances for every takeoff and landing. Even if you could easily afford all of the above with your skyscraper-sized cash piles, would it ever be worth the hassle to organize and maintain? Maybe you have someone handle that for you, but you have to hire them - or hire someone to hire them. When does it end? I really don't get the appeal.

ricardobeat 8y ago
As an owner, you don’t really get to see or feel any of that. You walk into the terminal, use your pre-screened security pass, so no lines or x-ray, step into the plane and you’re off. Depending on the airport you might be able to drive up to the runway and step directly into the aircraft. You pay a commercial operator for the pilot, hangar and maintenance of the plane. How does that sound compared to flying coach? Source: none, I don’t own a private jet.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
The obvious answer to this is: because who doesn't want to own a private jet!
dogma1138 8y ago
A private jet allows you to be anywhere you need to be in the world on a whim. And more importantly it allows you to build your commute around your schedule not the other way around first class or not they won’t wait for you on the tarmac for 3 hours because a meeting is running late nor will they care if you need to be in Tokyo or not when you try to rebook the tickets and the next flight is completely full. If you can’t understand the value of this if you are making Bezos scale decisions then there isn’t anything more I can say. Also for Bezos nor for anyone else is it a hassle to manage this by the time you fly on your own jet your personal life is already run as a corporation.
- gsnedders 8y ago
  Also: it opens up a whole world of extra potential point-to-point flights that commercial operators will never operate due to lack of market, limited only by customs ports (for international borders). Want to fly from Nice to LA? No need to spend a couple of hours connecting anywhere, just fly direct.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  This is the crux of it, if you're a senior executive your time is often more valuable than the cost of a private jet. Imagine if Bezos can't get to a shareholder meeting because of a delayed flight, there's millions of dollars at stake on every move he makes. It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    >It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale. While I don't know anyone with a personal Jet I've known a handful of people that essentially grew up with a household staff where they had like 3 to 5 or so people full time supporting the household. The best explanation for the experience was essentially they had an office manager / executive assistant that they could call on for most things growing up for most of them there was a single point of contact that managed the the staff and they would tell them what they need (I need to buy X, or I need to be in place Y on date Z or I want to have a party for M) and they'll sort it out. This essentially is needed if you are going to be living in a house "appropriate" to your net worth even starting at a few millions in old money (outside of the US) it comes to a point where you cannot actually manage the house and grounds on your own without it being a full time job and if you actually want to maintain both it's monetary and sentimental value a maintenance staff is nearly mandatory. Most of us would have trouble keeping up a 2-3 bed apartment running without having a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning service when we work full time, now imagine keeping up an 8-10 bed house with possibly guest quarters and the grounds around it. This is also one of the reasons that many of these huge houses are not as expensive as one might think as their yearly upkeep cost is pretty darn high.
tlrobinson 8y ago
If you have enough money to afford a private jet, there are companies that will happily take more of your money to handle all of those details for you.
D_Alex 8y ago
Say you live in Ann Arbor, and have holiday houses in Portland, MA and Colorado Springs...
- mseebach 8y ago
  Never mind that your average week often features a couple of meetings on Wall Street, with lawyers in DC, at the factory in Alabama and the research centre in Raleigh. Then a charity dinner in Boston and a round of golf with the chairman of the board at Hilton Head.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I really don't get the appeal. It isn't about practicalities, it's about status.
geff82 8y ago
It is not only that you can fly on your own schedule, it is, evenly important, also much easier to get where you actually want. Who says you only want to go to the big hubs, like San Francisco, New York or Frankfurt? What if you wanted to get directly from New York to Montpellier, France? And from there, meet some important clients in their holidays on the German island of Sylt? (and from there back to New York). All those are direct flights with a private jet, all of them are complicated and stop-over flights using airlines. And most of the airports in the world are simply not reachable via Airlines (let's say you want to visit the island of Usedom instead of Sylt). So you not only save the time by having a comfortable direct flight, you also get much closer and thus save money and time on the ground. By the way, if you do not fly alone in your private jet but fill some of the other seats with colleagues/friends... then flying private is also not necessarily more expensive than flying business class. Of course, surely flying private is not friendly to the environment. Then again, it will never be a mean of transportation for the masses. While I am just starting with my private pilot license this month, I slowly reach a level of income where it starts to have appeal not to drive to work/to the clients any more myself in the morning but simply paying someone a salary for driving me. Already now it would make some economic sense to work/sleep/play during my commutes. So I guess the appeal for someone really rich to fly somewhere in private is a no brainer.
pjc50 8y ago
Almost all of that is contracted out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-base_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-base_operator The clearances are fairly easy for small airports and would be handled by the pilot. The advantages are mostly in getting to pick your own route and timing; useful for CEOs with lots of offices to go to and a holiday home somewhere.
ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
I get the appeal and plenty of others have commented on why it's so appealing so I won't add to that but I will mention that based on what I've found online the biggest negative seems to be that commercial airlines have a much better safety record, if anyone has any first hand experience with stats on this please let me know if the Google results are correct.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  I believe that private jets are 5-10x more dangerous than commercial aviation, but still pretty safe. Probably pretty close to commercial aviation if you own or charter through a very reputable outfit like NetJets, don't fly yourself, and don't try to order the pilots to load passengers and baggage above the maximum takeoff weight, takeoff during bad weather because you have to get somewhere, etc.
segmondy 8y ago
The appeal of this particular jet is that you can fly it with just one pilot. Just like the cirus vision jet. If you have your own license, you can fly yourself. The appeal of a jet is that you can fly at your own time. If you are having lots of meetings across the country and transporting a team of 5-8 folks. At a running cost of about $2000/hr it's not too bad! The cirrus jet has a running cost of about $800/hr if I recall correctly. Did you hear about the big tax break jet owner's got this year? :-D
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  I just looked it up, and you're actually not way off about the hourly operating costs. I was surprised it's that low. Also, there was no "big tax break" for private jet owners: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-tax-bill-break-private-jets_us_5a0f563be4b0e97dffed3e5a https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-tax-bill-break-p...
  - segmondy 8y ago
    They say $1134/hr but actual experience shows it's much higher. It's like MPG. If you drive 50mpg sure, likewise the jet's published hourly operating cost is all about going on cruise speed and not as fast as you can, no headwinds, perfect conditions, cheap insurance, etc. Real world cost is closer to $2000/hr
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      Yeah, sorry...I meant to say you're NOT way off :) (edited). $2k / hr is probably about right if they're claiming $1134.
justherefortart 8y ago
Are you kidding me? With someone that has customers in small towns across the midwest I could fly from my home town to their town and have a driver pick me up in a fraction of the time required to fly commercial. When you have piles of cash, you're not maintaining or organizing this yourself. Lmfao. I'd probably go with NetJets before this though.
xvf22 8y ago
You can land at executive airports and avoid any TSA hassles.
- ksherlock 8y ago
  General aviation avoids TSA hassles at all airports.
leetcrew 8y ago
having a private jet is likely not "economical" unless you fly a lot. but it's still a better experience than flying first class in almost every way. the biggest advantage is that you set the schedule yourself. some routes only have one or two non-stop flights per day. now you have a non-stop flight whenever you want. combined with the fact that you no longer have to show up early to make sure you have time for security (now you never go through security at all, and if you're late the plane waits for you), this is a huge time saver. you can also have much better accommodations on your own plane. better alcohol, food you actually want to eat, even more comfortable seats, etc. you can guarantee that a child will never scream in your ear or kick the back of your seat. comparing a private jet to first class is honestly ridiculous, the experiences are leagues apart. i would fly privately if i could remotely afford it. the real question is what advantage is there to owning a plane versus simply chartering them on demand. i assume it just comes down to frequency of travel.
bronco21016 8y ago
I think you’re overestimating the need to manage everything. There are hundreds of companies in the US alone that provide private jet management with a range of different services. For example, my wife’s boss has a Dassault Falcon 2000. He keeps it under management with a company at the nearby executive airport. I also have a few friends who are pilots for the same management company. The management company maintains the aircraft, hires, trains, pays, and schedules pilots, and handles every aspect of a flight. He simply has his assistant call to schedule his trips. The aircraft is used for a mix of business and personal use. In addition to everything the management company provides for his personally owned airplane, they also have a fleet of other aircraft that he has access to for a significantly reduced fee. This is useful for when some people need to be one place but a team of other people need to travel from the main office to the distribution centers or vendors. When you’re moving 5-6 people for a trip the advantage of being able to complete the trip in a day vs an overnight is pretty significant. By the time you factor in 5-6 airline tickets, lost employee productivity, and hotels for 5-6 people for a night. You come out about even, if not ahead, by using the jet. Often when they travel they’ll have a flight attendant and catering that provides easily just as good, if not better, service than you’ll get on most domestic business class flights in the US. In summary, better service, on-demand, and basically no effort other than an e-mail or phone call. I’d say it’s worth it if money means nothing to you.
a_c_s 8y ago
The big advantages are ease and flexibility. Ease: there's no TSA security before boarding, so (from a passenger perspective) you just climb in to the plane and take off, similar to hopping into a car. Flexibility: you don't have to worry about airline schedules. When your meeting is over you just hop into the plane and fly to the next destination. Especially when traveling to/from non-major airports (where there may only be 1-2 flights/day) or small cities (which may only have a municipal airport) there can be huge time savings from using a private plane. (Source: I've tagged along when university administrators flew to a Reagents meeting. It was a propeller plane and what would have been a 2-hour drive was a 15-20 minute flight. I'm not a pilot so I don't know how much paperwork was involved nor how much lead time the pilots had before we told them we were ready to leave.)
toast0 8y ago
Flying on a private jet is clearly better than flying first class. You don't have to own the jet though. (Renting time is probably more flexible than owning, but there are peak times where rentals are tight) It only takes a few minutes to walk from the parking lot through the general aviation terminal and onto the plane, there's no hassle with luggage, and you don't need to wait for the rest of the passengers to get on the plane. You can fly into smaller airports and pick the schedule that works best for you.

ricardobeat 8y ago

As an owner, you don’t really get to see or feel any of that. You walk into the terminal, use your pre-screened security pass, so no lines or x-ray, step into the plane and you’re off. Depending on the airport you might be able to drive up to the runway and step directly into the aircraft. You pay a commercial operator for the pilot, hangar and maintenance of the plane. How does that sound compared to flying coach? Source: none, I don’t own a private jet.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

The obvious answer to this is: because who doesn't want to own a private jet!

dogma1138 8y ago

A private jet allows you to be anywhere you need to be in the world on a whim. And more importantly it allows you to build your commute around your schedule not the other way around first class or not they won’t wait for you on the tarmac for 3 hours because a meeting is running late nor will they care if you need to be in Tokyo or not when you try to rebook the tickets and the next flight is completely full. If you can’t understand the value of this if you are making Bezos scale decisions then there isn’t anything more I can say. Also for Bezos nor for anyone else is it a hassle to manage this by the time you fly on your own jet your personal life is already run as a corporation.

gsnedders 8y ago
Also: it opens up a whole world of extra potential point-to-point flights that commercial operators will never operate due to lack of market, limited only by customs ports (for international borders). Want to fly from Nice to LA? No need to spend a couple of hours connecting anywhere, just fly direct.
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
This is the crux of it, if you're a senior executive your time is often more valuable than the cost of a private jet. Imagine if Bezos can't get to a shareholder meeting because of a delayed flight, there's millions of dollars at stake on every move he makes. It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  >It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale. While I don't know anyone with a personal Jet I've known a handful of people that essentially grew up with a household staff where they had like 3 to 5 or so people full time supporting the household. The best explanation for the experience was essentially they had an office manager / executive assistant that they could call on for most things growing up for most of them there was a single point of contact that managed the the staff and they would tell them what they need (I need to buy X, or I need to be in place Y on date Z or I want to have a party for M) and they'll sort it out. This essentially is needed if you are going to be living in a house "appropriate" to your net worth even starting at a few millions in old money (outside of the US) it comes to a point where you cannot actually manage the house and grounds on your own without it being a full time job and if you actually want to maintain both it's monetary and sentimental value a maintenance staff is nearly mandatory. Most of us would have trouble keeping up a 2-3 bed apartment running without having a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning service when we work full time, now imagine keeping up an 8-10 bed house with possibly guest quarters and the grounds around it. This is also one of the reasons that many of these huge houses are not as expensive as one might think as their yearly upkeep cost is pretty darn high.

tlrobinson 8y ago

If you have enough money to afford a private jet, there are companies that will happily take more of your money to handle all of those details for you.

D_Alex 8y ago

Say you live in Ann Arbor, and have holiday houses in Portland, MA and Colorado Springs...

mseebach 8y ago
Never mind that your average week often features a couple of meetings on Wall Street, with lawyers in DC, at the factory in Alabama and the research centre in Raleigh. Then a charity dinner in Boston and a round of golf with the chairman of the board at Hilton Head.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

I really don't get the appeal. It isn't about practicalities, it's about status.

geff82 8y ago

It is not only that you can fly on your own schedule, it is, evenly important, also much easier to get where you actually want. Who says you only want to go to the big hubs, like San Francisco, New York or Frankfurt? What if you wanted to get directly from New York to Montpellier, France? And from there, meet some important clients in their holidays on the German island of Sylt? (and from there back to New York). All those are direct flights with a private jet, all of them are complicated and stop-over flights using airlines. And most of the airports in the world are simply not reachable via Airlines (let's say you want to visit the island of Usedom instead of Sylt). So you not only save the time by having a comfortable direct flight, you also get much closer and thus save money and time on the ground. By the way, if you do not fly alone in your private jet but fill some of the other seats with colleagues/friends... then flying private is also not necessarily more expensive than flying business class. Of course, surely flying private is not friendly to the environment. Then again, it will never be a mean of transportation for the masses. While I am just starting with my private pilot license this month, I slowly reach a level of income where it starts to have appeal not to drive to work/to the clients any more myself in the morning but simply paying someone a salary for driving me. Already now it would make some economic sense to work/sleep/play during my commutes. So I guess the appeal for someone really rich to fly somewhere in private is a no brainer.

pjc50 8y ago

Almost all of that is contracted out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-base_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-base_operator The clearances are fairly easy for small airports and would be handled by the pilot. The advantages are mostly in getting to pick your own route and timing; useful for CEOs with lots of offices to go to and a holiday home somewhere.

ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago

I get the appeal and plenty of others have commented on why it's so appealing so I won't add to that but I will mention that based on what I've found online the biggest negative seems to be that commercial airlines have a much better safety record, if anyone has any first hand experience with stats on this please let me know if the Google results are correct.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I believe that private jets are 5-10x more dangerous than commercial aviation, but still pretty safe. Probably pretty close to commercial aviation if you own or charter through a very reputable outfit like NetJets, don't fly yourself, and don't try to order the pilots to load passengers and baggage above the maximum takeoff weight, takeoff during bad weather because you have to get somewhere, etc.

segmondy 8y ago

The appeal of this particular jet is that you can fly it with just one pilot. Just like the cirus vision jet. If you have your own license, you can fly yourself. The appeal of a jet is that you can fly at your own time. If you are having lots of meetings across the country and transporting a team of 5-8 folks. At a running cost of about $2000/hr it's not too bad! The cirrus jet has a running cost of about $800/hr if I recall correctly. Did you hear about the big tax break jet owner's got this year? :-D

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I just looked it up, and you're actually not way off about the hourly operating costs. I was surprised it's that low. Also, there was no "big tax break" for private jet owners: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-tax-bill-break-private-jets_us_5a0f563be4b0e97dffed3e5a https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-tax-bill-break-p...
- segmondy 8y ago
  They say $1134/hr but actual experience shows it's much higher. It's like MPG. If you drive 50mpg sure, likewise the jet's published hourly operating cost is all about going on cruise speed and not as fast as you can, no headwinds, perfect conditions, cheap insurance, etc. Real world cost is closer to $2000/hr
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    Yeah, sorry...I meant to say you're NOT way off :) (edited). $2k / hr is probably about right if they're claiming $1134.

justherefortart 8y ago

Are you kidding me? With someone that has customers in small towns across the midwest I could fly from my home town to their town and have a driver pick me up in a fraction of the time required to fly commercial. When you have piles of cash, you're not maintaining or organizing this yourself. Lmfao. I'd probably go with NetJets before this though.

xvf22 8y ago

You can land at executive airports and avoid any TSA hassles.

ksherlock 8y ago
General aviation avoids TSA hassles at all airports.

leetcrew 8y ago

having a private jet is likely not "economical" unless you fly a lot. but it's still a better experience than flying first class in almost every way. the biggest advantage is that you set the schedule yourself. some routes only have one or two non-stop flights per day. now you have a non-stop flight whenever you want. combined with the fact that you no longer have to show up early to make sure you have time for security (now you never go through security at all, and if you're late the plane waits for you), this is a huge time saver. you can also have much better accommodations on your own plane. better alcohol, food you actually want to eat, even more comfortable seats, etc. you can guarantee that a child will never scream in your ear or kick the back of your seat. comparing a private jet to first class is honestly ridiculous, the experiences are leagues apart. i would fly privately if i could remotely afford it. the real question is what advantage is there to owning a plane versus simply chartering them on demand. i assume it just comes down to frequency of travel.

bronco21016 8y ago

I think you’re overestimating the need to manage everything. There are hundreds of companies in the US alone that provide private jet management with a range of different services. For example, my wife’s boss has a Dassault Falcon 2000. He keeps it under management with a company at the nearby executive airport. I also have a few friends who are pilots for the same management company. The management company maintains the aircraft, hires, trains, pays, and schedules pilots, and handles every aspect of a flight. He simply has his assistant call to schedule his trips. The aircraft is used for a mix of business and personal use. In addition to everything the management company provides for his personally owned airplane, they also have a fleet of other aircraft that he has access to for a significantly reduced fee. This is useful for when some people need to be one place but a team of other people need to travel from the main office to the distribution centers or vendors. When you’re moving 5-6 people for a trip the advantage of being able to complete the trip in a day vs an overnight is pretty significant. By the time you factor in 5-6 airline tickets, lost employee productivity, and hotels for 5-6 people for a night. You come out about even, if not ahead, by using the jet. Often when they travel they’ll have a flight attendant and catering that provides easily just as good, if not better, service than you’ll get on most domestic business class flights in the US. In summary, better service, on-demand, and basically no effort other than an e-mail or phone call. I’d say it’s worth it if money means nothing to you.

a_c_s 8y ago

The big advantages are ease and flexibility. Ease: there's no TSA security before boarding, so (from a passenger perspective) you just climb in to the plane and take off, similar to hopping into a car. Flexibility: you don't have to worry about airline schedules. When your meeting is over you just hop into the plane and fly to the next destination. Especially when traveling to/from non-major airports (where there may only be 1-2 flights/day) or small cities (which may only have a municipal airport) there can be huge time savings from using a private plane. (Source: I've tagged along when university administrators flew to a Reagents meeting. It was a propeller plane and what would have been a 2-hour drive was a 15-20 minute flight. I'm not a pilot so I don't know how much paperwork was involved nor how much lead time the pilots had before we told them we were ready to leave.)

toast0 8y ago

Flying on a private jet is clearly better than flying first class. You don't have to own the jet though. (Renting time is probably more flexible than owning, but there are peak times where rentals are tight) It only takes a few minutes to walk from the parking lot through the general aviation terminal and onto the plane, there's no hassle with luggage, and you don't need to wait for the rest of the passengers to get on the plane. You can fly into smaller airports and pick the schedule that works best for you.