The super-wealthy are already in competition for who has the biggest, most-blinged out yacht. So why not planes? Joe Sharkey last covered the issue of “mine plane needs to be bigger” in the Times with a story on how some of the biggest ballers were trading up from those cramped, tiny corporate jets to converted commercial jets, including 747s.
Of course it was only a matter of time until someone set their eyes on the new generation of superjumbojets. At least one has already been ordered by a wealthy individual, so you know more are on the way. The price tag for an Airbus A380—the biggest passenger jet ever built—is merely $310 million—which is only four times what the average super yacht costs (if there is such thing as an average super yacht). But that’s for the stripped down version—getting it up to mega mogul speed will take around $100 million
(By the way, if this sort of story sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because you read it before on ESPN.com.)
It Can Hold 853 Passengers, but Why Should You Share? [New York Times]
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What a waste of resources – a full-sized plane just to fly one person around, emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide and using huge amounts of fuel. Private jets should be banned. Why can’t rich people just fly first class on regular airlines?
If private jets were banned, how would Al Gore show his slideshow all over the world?
The real scandal here is American CEOs flying European jets. Any patriotic executive would buy a Boeing, or better yet–a Chevy.
Have you ever flown commercial before? It’s awful.
Seriously, can you guys at least skim over what you have written? I am honestly having a bit of trouble reading stories like this, there are typos in every other sentence.
forget this, i’ll keep the Citation X, fastest private jet in the world. who has time to lumber around the globe in a widebody?
You know it’s the Arabs. Always blame it on the Arabs.
Hey, spellchecker man, get a life. They are putting up a dozen or so posts a day–researching, reading, writing–and you’re bugged by an typo here and there. There are typos everyday in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Grow up.
Buyers have to be NPAs (Non-Performing Arabs). Anybody else with enough money to buy a lumbering A380 would have sufficient financial common sense to see that buying that kind of metal for a private jet doesn’t make sense. If you own your own private aircraft, chances are you aren’t using it every day. Ergo low block-hours. At low block-hours, your biggest cost is capital cost. You don’t need a fuel-sipping high-efficiency new plane because you aren’t putting in the block-hours to justify the cost. You don’t need a low-maintenance new plane because you have plenty of downtime to do maintenance. Just buy an early-90s vintage 757 or 767 and kit out the interior nicely. Non-Arab non-retards with a big jet fetish get this… look what The Donald flies (old 727) or the Google guys (early-90s vintage 767).