The US makes up 49.7% of the world market for private jets; Europe 20.8%; Asia Pacific 11.8%; Latin and South America 11.6%; Africa and the Middle East: 6.1%.
Gulfstream 550 $8,640
Global Express/XRS $8,045
Falcon 7X $7,865
Falcon 900 $6,075
Gulfstream IV $5,884
Challenger 604 $5,053
Citation X $4,533
Hawker 800 $3,582
Citation Excel/XLS $3,388
Learjet 60 $3,347
Citation Mustang $1,674
Cost to charter a Gulfstream V for a weekend trip from New York City to San Francisco: $106,711.17
(Friday evening to Sunday evening, all costs including helicopter transportation to and from airport, two full-time captains, a flight attendant, crew per diems, landing, ramp, parking, fuel surcharge, taxes, etc)
The biggest event for private jet travel is the Super Bowl; this year, over six hundred private aircraft flew into New Orleans Lakefront Airport for Super Bowl XLVII (typical weekend traffic at the airport is just 125 landings). Other top events include the Masters Golf Tournament and Art Basel Miami Beach.
The average cost to charter a Gulfstream 550 for a single hour is $8,640. That’s enough money to buy 74 round-trip tickets for travel between New York and Washington, D.C on Jet Blue.
Over 259,000 private takeoffs and landings occurred at Van Nuys airport in 2012, making it the busiest general aviation airport in the world. Traffic was down 13.9% from a year earlier.
One of the very first business aircraft was Smiling Thru, a Travel Air Model 6000-B monoplane built by H. L. Ogg, president of the Automatic Washer Company of Newton, Iowa. The interior contained seating for five, a room with demo washing machines, and a typing table. Ogg called it his “private air office.”
The most popular model of private jet in the U.S. is the Cessna Citation Excel, also known as the Citation XLS and XLS+. This medium-sized business jet took off on 144,302 flights in 2012, at an average charter rate of $3,388 per hour.
The world’s most expensive private jet, an Airbus A380 owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, has an estimated cost over $500 million. Some of the special features of the jet include a two-car garage, a stable for horses and camels, and a prayer room that rotates so it always faces Mecca.
Warren Buffett was a long-time critic of private air travel before Berkshire Hathaway bought its first corporate jet (for $850,000, used) in 1986. When the company sold it and bought a nicer model in 1989 (for $6.7 million), Buffett summarized his attitude toward the jet with a prayer attributed to St. Augustine: “Help me, Oh Lord, to become chaste – but not yet.” He named the plane “The Indefensible.” Within a few years, Buffet was so enamored of the plane that he told Berkshire shareholders he found the thought of retiring it ” more revolting than the thought of retiring the Chairman,” and joked that he wished to be buried with the plane. In 1998, Berkshire Hathaway acquired fractional jet-ownership company NetJets Inc. for $725 million.
Celebrities who have their own jets include Oprah Winfrey (Bombardier Global Express XRS), Jackie Chan (Embraer Legacy 650), and Jay-Z (Bombardier Challenger 850). Some celebs even fly the plane themselves, like Tom Cruise (Gulfstream IV), Jimmy Buffett (Dassault Falcon 900), and John Travolta. Travolta owns eleven jets, including a Boeing 707, and is the official “Ambassador-at-Large” for Qantas Airlines.
In 2012, NetJets logged more than 300,000 flight hours across its fleet –more than 35 years in the air. The total distance logged, 110,585,785 nautical miles, is equivalent to 266.2 round trips to the moon.
10,397 people “like” the Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation on Facebook. Only 63 people “like” the Transportation Security Administration.
“That is what makes me feel successful. Of all the wonderful things that have happened, including getting a doctorate, an honorary doctorate from Duke, what really makes me feel successful is being able to use my life in service to someone else’s… and it is really fantastic to have your own jet, and anybody who says it isn’t is lying to you. That jet thing is really good.”
-Oprah Winfrey, in a May 10, 2009 commencement address at Duke University.
The maximum headroom on a Dassault Falcon 7X is six feet, two inches. That means the tallest player in the NBA, Oklahoma City Thunder center Hasheem Thabeet, is about thirteen inches too tall — he’ll have to bend over as he walks down the aisle of the plane.
Thirty percent of current private jet owners say they’ll purchase a new jet in the next five years. Over 10,000 new business jets are expected to be delivered in the next ten years, at a cumulative value of $250 billion.
There were 1,466 private jet crashes in 2011, resulting in 263 fatalities. If you’re going to fly private, your best bet is to fly in the company plane: The global accident rate for corporate jets is only 1/6th that for owner-operated private jets.