Private Jet

Have rich people stopped riding in limos and buying Hummers? The price of fuel has only increased the cost of operating one of these babies a tiny percent. Maintenance, ground support, pilots, are really expensive and then there's the non-cash depreciation and the amortization. Fuel is a minor operational headache. Private planes were a real extravagance before 9/11, but now the time savings and security make up a lot of ground on commmercial flights.

 

I have to agree with the above post. The cost of fuel is pennies compared to the other costs of operating and maintaining a privet plane. Most of these guys use time shares so its a pretty set price. As far as worrying about fuel prices, well when you are making millions if not billions you really don't worry about such a thing. I bet they lose more sleep over the stock market.

 

I dont think it will effect rich buying private jets. Fuel price is no object for them.

 

When you can barely afford a car worth 10-20k,a $200-$400 more on gas a year makes a big difference in your budget.
When you buy a $100k+ car ,$300-$500 a year more, will mean spit to you.

 

Hey guys. I fly a jetstream and it burns about 160 gallons per hour, but the airline buys it wholesale. My dad flies a Gulfstream for an oil company and it burns right around 700 gallons the first hour. Ouch. He signs credit card receipts for fuel for like $15000 all the time. Yeah, that's 3 zeros and that's not even a full tank. Sure, the airliners burn more, but their paying like a buck fifty a gallon wholesale. When your paying $4 plus a gallon it gets expensive real quick. Even so, the other costs are quite a bit more than the fuel. If you can afford the plane, you can probably afford the fuel.

 

I have heard that it costs between $2000 and $6000 per hour to fly jets. And the annual fixed costs are pretty eye-watering (for the average individual) as well. So I would think that the change in fuel prices, as a component of these staggering costs, is negligible.

osuav8r, anyone else:
How come there's such a difference between the JetStream and Gulfstream? Which models are you comparing and how do they stack up in terms of:
Seating capacity?
Take off weight difference?
Engine thrust ratings?
Payload capability?

Thanks!

 

With the new accounting regs for private plane use and the SEC's crackdown, look for more Fortune 500 guys to start flying chartered flights at $4k/person/trip for weekend getaways.

 

The bank made them sell a plane? That's bad. I would have hated to hear what that workout session was like.

 

I know some people worth well over $250m that can't justify flying anything other than commercial and they fly somewhere at least once a week.

Gary, I don't really know why you care about any of this about who owns a jet and why but I think that it's pointless. I will never own a jet. I think that it's a huge waste of money.

 

Flying at 31,000 at 450 knots is an experience like no other!! I chartered a Cessna CJ1 a couple of years ago for the day and despite the expense ($25 a minute)...I'll never regret it! Hopefully not a "once-in-a-lifetime" experience.

KevFla

 

Someone asked the difference between a jetstream and a gulfstream. A Jet stream is a 30 seat turboprop with high density seating (think sardine can) that I fly for a regional (or commuter depending on who you ask) airline. It weighs about 24000 pounds. It is noisy and goes about 290 knots. It would cost you about $1200 an hour to run if you owned one. Price new was probably around 10 million. A gulfstream is a top of the line business jet that weighs about 75000 pounds at max weight. It cruises at like .80 mach which is roughly 560 mph or so. Price new is low 40 million dollar range with interior and paint. They are almost always set up as executive airplanes with 10 to 12 seats or so but it is a much bigger airplane than a Jetstream. It is a very nice airplane that you can stand straight up in and walk around and is capable of flying almost anywhere in the world nonstop. They are completely, completely different airplanes. If you want to see pictures go to airliners.net and search for each one. From a pilots perspective, they couldn't be more different. A gulfstream makes a Jetstream look very very bad. Price per hour to run a gulfstream costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000 an hour. Netjets, a fractional ownership management company will sell you a fraction of one with a sixteenth share usually being the smallest they will go. On a Gulfstream, you would pay a monthly maintenance fee of around $10000 and then for each hour you used it, you pay around $6500 an hour. They are a good company, but they are expensive. Charter Gulfstreams can be had for around $5000 per hour without the monthly maintenance fee, but you're usually getting an older aircraft that may not be as lavishly finished or as immaculate as a netjets airplane. Whn companies need to make the numbers look better, it's easy to sell the company jet and add another 5-35 million to the bank account.

 

That wouldn't make the numbers look better to a shareholder or investor. Not by a long shot. On the balance sheet, it's a reduction in assets on the PP&E line and maybe an increase in cash or reduction in short term liabilities. On the income statement it would be cash recognized from operations so it's pretty much not seen as making the company look better. The only reason that a company would sell a plane on short notice is because they are in deep poo with the bank and the bank orders them to sell it to reduce debt.

 

This WILL change soon enough. With jet engine prices are coming down, "personal" jets will be the next big thing, trust me. The Cessna Mustang, the upcoming Honda Jet and the Eclipse will really change the way these execs travel. It's a lot more cost-efficient than before and the owner can actually fly these things by themselves.

It just makes sense for someone who's time is critical to have access to a fast, reliable airplane that can climb over the weather and file a direct flight plan.

http://mustang.cessna.com/
http://www.eclipseaviation.com/
http://www.ainonline.com/Features/newbusinessaircraft02/nba_hondajet.html

RMX

 

The HondaJet just made its first public appearance at the EAA:

http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/jul05/344538.asp

 

They make the Eclipse at ABQ, where i fly out of. Never seen one of themn though. I guess they dont test in the mornings. They seem like good choices considering you could have one for a lot less than a new King Air. The only thing i can think of that would keep people who have a few million lying around from buying one is the maintenance and gas. Just like a ferrari, you may be able to afford the plane, but can you afford the operating costs? (which reminds me, I didnt think they existed out here but I finally saw a ferrari in Albuquerque, a 550 or 575.)

 

i was torn of choosing b/w the two option....this makes my decision a lot easier. i am gonna stick w/ my "cattle herder" southwest airline and will continue to accumulate points for the "friend fly free" program.....

 

Whats the difference between a turboprop and a regular
prop engine?

Ive seen several engines listed on planes,

Prop (4-6 piston + prop)
Turbo Prop (4-6 piston, turbo, intercooled, + prop)
TurboProp (looks like something different from above)
Jet.

Whats the difference between 2 and 3?

Thanks.

 

Turboprop = propeller driven by turbine engine instead of a piston engine.

 

A piston engine with a turbocharger on it driving a prop isn't a turboprop. It would be referred to as just a piston engine. A turboprop is a jet engine with a propellor attatched to the front. To elaborate, in a jet engine, air is drawn in the front and comperessed, mixed with fuel and burned. The heat generated greatly increases the volume of the gas and it runs over the turbine section which is another series of fans in the rear part of the engine. The turbines (rear fans) are connected to the front fans (compressors) through a shaft(s) and provide the power to the compressors to keep feeding the engine air. The excess gas velocity left over after it has passed over the turbine section is exhausted out the back of the engine to produce thrust. In a turboprop engine, the rear fans are designed in such a way that they extract almost all of the energy from the expanding gas coming out of the combustion chamber so that there is very little gas velocity coming out the rear of the engine (usually from 100 to 200 lbs of thrust on a turboprop versus usually thousands of lbs of thrust for a jet engine). All this energy extracted from the exhaust stream in a turboprop engine is sent to the propellor through a shaft running through the center of the engine into a gearbox, where the rotational speed is reduced and the torque greatly increased and finally through an output shaft to the propellor. If you think about some of the numbers, some of them are truly staggering. The Jetsteam is rated at 1650 shaft horsepower per side at 1552 prop rpm. Horsepower is torquexRPM divided by 5252 so plugging in the numbers, to develop 1650 SHP at 1552 RPM, you get just short of 5600 ft/lbs of torque coming out of the gearbox. Sorry for the rant, it was of great interest to me in college.

 

Roundtrip for me from Austin, Tx to Vegas was $20,000 so thats about right.