High flyers
By Danielle Teutsch | theage.com.au | 27 April
Imagine flying to Europe first class and then being chauffeured from Frankfurt airport in a Porsche to your private jet. Within an hour you land in Nice to do some shopping. Then you pop back into your waiting jet to head to Siena for lunch with friends. The wine and conversation are flowing and you stay longer than expected but that's no problem because your plane will wait for you.
In the evening, you fly to Prague for a concert, then back to Frankfurt to sleep in your hotel. There has been no long check-in or waiting around in airport queues. There are no delays in take-off or delays at the baggage carousel. Needless to say, the facilities in your seven-seater plane are luxurious. The price for this three-cities-in-one-day extravaganza? A mere EUR42,482 ($72,899).
This is no fantasy scenario but a real, sample schedule provided by Lufthansa Private Jet, an arm of Lufthansa that has been going since it started in 2005.
Private jet travel is the last word in luxury, and the market is growing. While Lufthansa so far is the only major carrier to run its own private jet fleet, it is committed to expanding the service. The number of private jet flights operated by Lufthansa in 2007 was up 26 per cent on the previous year, and it has nine new jets (mostly Cessna Citations) on order.
Dnata Travel Services, a travel agency that is part of the colossal Emirates Group, also recently announced it is starting a luxury private jet service to meet the demand in the Middle East. The Middle East charter market has grown at 23 per cent a year during the past two years, according to Dnata. And last year, Richard Branson launched Virgin Charter, a service where you can compare charter flights and then book and buy seats online.
So who on earth can afford to use a private jet, apart from rock stars and the Pope?
Kai Peters, the general manager of Lufthansa German Airlines in Australia, says apart from celebrities, the main customers are high-end business executives.
Most passengers are from the US, Europe and, surprisingly, New Zealand. Australians have been slower to embrace the concept, operators say.
As for the celebrity customers, they have guaranteed privacy and absolute discretion - Peters, of course, won't name any of them.
Although the cost seems frightening, having your own air taxi is not the unfettered extravagance it seems, says Peters. If an executive and their team have multiple meetings in Europe it can save precious time. "It's seamless and easy to use," he says.
"You decide when you arrive and leave. If your meeting goes longer, the plane is waiting for you." And flights are point-to-point, with almost any connection possible from among 1000 airports in Europe and the Russian Federation - which makes the Frankfurt-Nice-Siena-Prague-Frankfurt itinerary possible in any given day, and even a brief stop in Ljubljana in between, if so desired.
Peters says it can even be cost-effective - though that is a relative term. Peters says that if seven executives visiting several cities in a day split the cost of a private jet, it can work out to be about the same as multiple business class tickets. "It's the villa concept; like sharing a villa with your friends," he says.
Leigh Cowderoy, manager of Luxury Air Travel by Dnata, agrees that when you add up the cost of first class tickets on scheduled airlines, the price of hiring a private jet is not prohibitive. "And when you add in the flexibility and privacy of travel by private jet, it is a price well worth paying for many customers," he says.
"A private jet charter also allows easy, convenient travel to specific events that would otherwise be difficult to get to directly from the UAE; events such as the Cannes Film Festival or Euro 2008, for example."
Cowderoy expects demand from customers who will take a scheduled flight into Dubai and then charter a private jet for the last leg of their journey to arrive in style, to destinations such as the Maldives, for example.
Is there any way to enjoy a private jet flight on a cattle-class budget? The closest such luxury comes to being reasonably priced is Virgin Charter's "empty leg" fares. Charter operators advertise empty flight legs on the website, and people can bid a price which the operator may choose to reject or accept. Most of them are in the US. An example was an empty flight from Van Nuys, California to Miami, Florida on a Gulfstream 200 worth almost $20,000 - as of last week, a group of nine passengers had bid $3622 for the flight, presumably throwing in just over $400 each. One can only imagine the party they planned to have.
Rarefied rates
Want to hop around Europe in style? Try a private jet.
* Prices depend on distance but here are some sample airfares with Lufthansa Private Jet: Munich, Germany to Lublin, Poland, one way. Small size jet (up to four people): EUR8604 ($14,600). Mid-sized jet (up to seven people): EUR12,428. Large jet (up to 12 people): EUR17,621. Three European cities in a day: EUR42,482 (up to seven people). Prices quoted include catering and in-flight entertainment.
Source: The Sun-Herald
First published by TheAge.com.au on April 27 2008
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