Not that I am in the market (except in my dreams).... Anyone can lay some concrete numbers on owning a private jet? Let's take a Dassault 7x, supposedly one of the cheaper to maintain jets out there. $40mm to buy it, what does it cost to run it and to maintain it? Insurance, maintenance, fuel, crew, storage, etc, etc. Do you hire a crew only when you need it or have to maintain a crew 'on call'? Are there any wealthy owners who fly their own private jets - of course they need to be certified on the machine
Executive Controller usually publishes those numbers and I can't recall the actual cost off the top of my head. My guess is around $3,000/hr. The big Gulfstreams are somewhere in the $3500-$4000 range. That's usually including a flight crew, etc etc. If I can find the mag, I'll post the figures. Not cheap. RMX
I recall seeing ads in the Dupont Registry where you can use a private jet on an as-needed basis, sort of like a timeshare or rental. It's beginning to sound more and more attractive, given the excruciating long waits & lines & anal probes at commercial airports these days ... How long before we get to the point where everyone has to board flights in the nude?
You would maintain your own crew, especially for an airplane like a 7X. If you are new to aviation, you can hire a management company to manage it, and they will hire a crew for you and charge you a management fee. I would WAG a ballpark figure of $2.0MM/year, depending on how much you want to fly. If you fly a lot, maybe $2.2MM, if you don't fly much, maybe $1.8MM. Presumably the 7X would be under warranty, which might reduce it some the first year, but there is a lot which is not covered by warranty. I was surprised to learn from a friend of mine that the warranty on their 2000EX only covered labor for 6 months. Yes, there are plenty of owners who fly their own jet aircraft. The CEO of Sony, for instance, is qualified on their Falcons. I'm sure there are others.
The problem with those hourly cost estimates are that the bulk of the costs associated with owning an aircraft are fixed. The direct cost of flying it isn't all that much, relatively. Crew salaries, training, hangar, insurance, calendar maintenance, mechanic salary, flight attendant salary, etc. all get you whether you fly 1 hour or 1000 hours.
I wish Gentry was around to answer these questions. As the family has had planes before, you have four main costs: 1. Plane plus interest or lease payments. 2. Management (hanger, crew, and insurance) 3. Per hour cost (crew, landing fees, maintenance) 4. Fuel Fact of the matter is that most people are going to a fractional ownership route with the exception of some very large companies. The family never went with a jet as most of the flights were regional and not cross country, but I know that my father in law went through four twin engine planes in about 20 years. My dad's company has two and they're more an ego trip than a necessity. I fly commerical, even business class/first class is just so much cheaper at the end of the day...
You could probably buy four first class tickets every day of the year, throw away the ones you don't use, and it would still be a LOT cheaper than having your own jet.
Not really. Sometimes you might need to go somewhere and back the same day where airliners offer one flight per day. Sometimes you might want to land in remote airports where big airliners can't even touch. Sometimes you might need the plane to finish a certain deal . Sometimes your time might be more expensive than waiting in airports and running after your next flight. People who buy private jets are not idiots. It might look cheaper to you the way you described it, but it is way cheaper for them to have their own jet.
Here is a breakdown of the per hour and annual costs per model for most of the major players... http://www.omnijet.com/database/ If you want to drop a few bucks and get the exact to the minute specifics on any type I would try Conklin & de Decker. http://www.aso.com/i.aso3/staticcontent.jsp?which=cda/main If you are comparing to charter don't forget about the cost of dead legs, the 7% federal excise tax, fuel surcharges, landing fees, catering costs, etc. above and beyond the quoted per hour cost.
Unquestionable comfort,convenience,privacy and flexibility no commercial airline can provide(regardless of how comfy their first class is). Of course it's a luxury and cost lots of $$ but if you can afford it, you won't go back,ever.Remember too,at certain income level,time is money,unnecesary stress can cost you big time and flying private saves you a lot of headaches. (maybe pointless when traveling to replace rubber seals in some equipment piece in a far out motel,more important when planning to negotiate a multimillion $ contract)
Dassault 7x probably costs $4000-5000 per hour to own and operate, maybe more with high fuel costs recently (jet fuel costs almost double what auto fuel costs right now). That's if you have a high utilization rate 400-500 hours per year). Much more if you don't fly it that much. Insurance is probably in the $100-125k range per year. You probably have 2-3 full time pilots and 1 full time mechanic on the payroll. For a plane that size, you probably have a flight attendant, too. All-in, you're looking at $2-3 million per year (or more) to own and operate a plane of that caliber. Some owners fly their planes, but they're few and far between. Most prefer to ride in the back.
Fractional ownership is the way to go. Flexjet.com is one of the best in my book. new programs include no reloaction fees for some travel (Hawaii and some points in Europe). costs? figure yer in for about $100k/year (for a lower number of flight hours, more hours = more $). But if you shuttle around several people, to several locations, on short notice on a regular basis... and need the privacy and security that private airtravel affords... its worth every cent. if yer interested contact me and I can put you touch with a rep at FlexJet in my best goombah voice: "Perhaps I can do you a favor... and perhaps one day, and that day may never come, I will ask for a favor in return."
Depends on how much you fly. If you don't fly all that much, you're probably better off doing fractional or charters. If you fly a lot, you're better off owning your own plane. The breakeven point is usually somewhere around 300 hours per year.
Fractional programs are better in some ways. If you are doing a lot of one way trips, or bringing people in from many different locations at once, then fractional ownership makes sense. However, if you analyze it, fractional ownership costs you just about twice the hourly rate of a reputable charter (and the jet card programs are much worse), meaning that any flying you do that is not one way is costing you significantly more than a comparable charter. The plus side is that all of the big fractionals are consistent, well maintained, well trained, and safe. With charter, you need to do some due diligence to make sure you are going with a solid operator-- there are lots of fly by night guys out there.
Maybe on an old G-2 or something, but not on a modern Falcon. A 50 or 900 (don't know much about the 7X) will use about 350 gallons per hour, block (less if you are doing mostly long legs), so each $2 swing in fuel prices would be $700/hour. If you are flying 300 hours per year, the extra $2 in fuel prices would cost you $210k. Your entire fuel budget, at $4/gallon, would be around $420k, or about 20% of the overall budget.
I don't have the Conklin numbers in front of me for the Falcons, but are you sure a 900 only uses 350 gals per hour? A Challenger is around 330 per hour and that's 2 engines vs. 3. A 7x would have to be more than that as it's a much bigger plane. If you take the lease payment out of the equation (by far the biggest line item in the budget), fuel is our #2 expense, ahead of salaries and insurance. That $420k you quoted would be for only 300 hours a year. For 400 hours per year it would be $560k and at 500 hours a year, it would be $700k. Obviously, the more you fly, the higher % of the total your direct costs are.
True enough. My point was that people tend to throw around these hourly costs, which are only valid if you fly a certain number of hours per year. Since a significant portion of the cost is fixed, it is my opinion that it is better to look at an annual budget, as opposed to trying to amortize the cost per hour. There is nothing wrong with analyzing per hour costs to verify the efficiency of the department or something, but if the question is "how much does it cost to operate a 7X?" the relevant figure is the annual budget, not $x/hour.
Yeah, that's true enough. Our budgets are always for 450-500 hours as that's the bogey for annual usage that we want to see. That's why I also put a $2-4mm price tag in my first post. Depending on the method of financing, that number could change drastically. I haven't talked to anyone about financing a $40mm plane, but the interest alone will run you $2-3mm with today's rates. And that's before you hire a single pilot or put a drop of fuel in it.
I'm not sure what they take into account when those numbers are calculated. All I know is it's too much freakin money for someone like myself. It's quite possible those #s are averaged from surveys of a/c owners. Total annual cost / total number of hrs flown / # of respondants for that particular make/model of airplane. It might be inclusive of tie-down fees, maint., insurance, crew training, hangar costs over a broad spectrum of owners, some flying more than others. The only place I've ever seen them published is in Executive Controller. RMX
Conklin & deDecker is the company that publishes the info. Others may do so as well, but Conklin is the industry standard. From my experience, they're quite accurate on the operating cost side of things (fuel, catering, landing fees, etc). Not so much when it comes to fixed costs like hangar/office, rent, insurance, salaries, and so on.
thought about it. I could probably afford a used one BUT I'm not a pilot & you really have to fly a lot in order to maintain your skills & not get killed, So I already have an expensive hobby & I dont need to be anywhere that fast On the other hand for the price of a so so used 6 passenger jet you can buy an Incredible new luxury custom Prevost coach w driver. If you dont have to get anywhere really fast the Prevost beats the jet easily on comfort & practicality. you can also tow a car trailer behind it plus its a lot easier to get a CDL than get rated to fly jets Maybe next year I'll pick up a nice Prevost
Along these lines, I was standing in line at the coffee/tea shop at CC last fall when the guy behind me says to the guy in front, "Hows the Learjet?" "Its in the shop" he replies and offers, "HOws the gulfstream?" I was about to chime in with some smart ass offering about my personal craft when they lauched into flight costs and repair costs etc. So for myself and 99.99% of the rest of the world, there really might be two guys standing in line at Starbucks, who both own private jets, love cars and look like regular guys. Only in S. Cal., eh? Shocked me to silence! But then, I am a hayseed from N. Calif. where these conversations just don't happen.
