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

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.