The terminal building at Farnborough, which hosts celebrities, billionaires and athletes, is surprisingly utilitarian — sure, there's a concierge to open your car door, deposit your bags and passports and show you through passport control when you arrive — but the grey Hampshire airport has clearly replaced the trappings of luxury with seamless efficiency.
But the $70m (£55m) Gulfstream G650 jet waiting on the runway is far from practical – Bill Gates owns two of them, Oprah Winfrey only has one. After I board and settle into one of the 12 quilted leather seats, champagne is flown, the doors are locked and we're taxied down to the runway, ready to swap leaden British skies for Venetian sunshine.
The twin Rolls-Royce BR725 AI-12 engines roar to life and the takeoff feels like it's been fired from a cannon. “And it's not a high-speed takeoff,” joked a veteran passenger.
Starbucks' new CEO, Brian Niccol, will commute 1,000 miles to work by private jet.
Robin Merchant/Getty
Starbucks drew some criticism last week when it was revealed that its new president, Brian Niccol, would be commuting about 1,000 miles on a corporate jet from his home in Newport Beach, Calif., to the coffee chain's headquarters in Seattle.
Nicole is not alone: Private aviation volume has rebounded sharply during the pandemic, up 20% in 2021 compared to 2019, and has only continued to rise since.
“COVID has galvanized the whole industry,” said Daniel Leifer, a partner at consulting firm McKinsey. “A lot of people have tried private jets during this time and realized, 'Maybe the return on investment is better than I thought, and it's not as high as I feared.' That's created a kind of stickiness.”
The U.S. remains the primary market, accounting for at least 50% of these dedicated flights. But with post-pandemic operations booming, private jet companies such as Warren Buffett's NetJets and FlexJet, backed by Chelsea FC owner Todd Boley, now see an opportunity: to replicate their U.S. success in Europe. Will the idea work?
On a picture-postcard day in Venice, with only a few thin clouds obscuring the bright blue sky, Flexjet chairman Ken Rich stepped out of a river taxi to be greeted by the manager in the restaurant of the 19th-century Gritti Palace hotel.
It's hard not to be infected by Rich's passion for aviation: He flew for the U.S. military in the 1970s, then moved to cargo and then private jets, flying musicians on months-long U.S. tours and, from 1992, serving as Bill Clinton's private pilot for many years.
“I always say there are two types of people in business: those who love business and love the deal. You can sell screws or you can sell hot dogs,” he said. “And then there are those who are passionate about their business. That's me.”
Flexjet's chairman, Ken Rich, flew in the U.S. military in the 1970s.
Nathan Gallagher
Flexjet, which operates a fleet of just over 300 aircraft, is the product of a venture Mr Rich launched with US defence giant Raytheon in the early 2000s. The company's fortunes soared after Mr Rich, with the backing of billionaire Mr Boley, bought Bombardier's private-jet unit in 2013.
A $3 billion initial public offering designed to help Mr. Boley cash out his investment fell through in 2023, and Mr. Rich paid $30 million in penalty fees. “I made a mistake. I should never have done it,” Mr. Rich said.
He now plans to break into Europe, but the headwinds are many.
“American corporations and wealthy individuals aren't under the same pressures as they are in Europe,” said Oliver Tebbit, aviation partner at law firm Watson Farley & Williams. “Private jet use in the US is primarily associated with large corporations that create jobs and economic output, so I think culturally there's very little resistance in the US… but in Europe there are environmental pressures, and a lot of the rest of the world is a bit overwhelmed by this.”
One example was an incident at Stansted Airport in June when Just Stop Oil claimed to have sprayed orange paint on two private jets owned by Taylor Swift, even though it turned out the jets did not belong to Swift. Meanwhile, Rich acknowledged that Flexjet chose not to paint its aircraft on the front of its London office for fear of retaliation.
Stop the Oil campaigners painted a jet orange at Stansted Airport this summer, believing it to be Taylor Swift's private jet.
Just Stopil/AFP/Getty Images
He points out that Flexjet gave customers the option to offset their carbon emissions, but no one took advantage. “So we changed our approach and said, 'OK, now you have to opt out.' Do you know how many people opted out? Zero.”
“Are people really going to stop flying? Is that what we're going to do? If that happens, I'll look for something else. We'll be in the boat business.”
Backlash from climate activists isn't the only problem to contend with. For starters, American tax incentives don't exist in Europe. “If a company puts money into a new private jet, they can claim capital allowances as a depreciation expense and deduct that against their profits,” Tebbit explained.
Then there are structural issues: “In Europe, people often have public transport options, like trains, which makes better use of their working hours,” said one investment banker who has worked on deals in the private jet market. “Then there's the pure distance issue: many European cities are much closer. And finally, there's the experience issue: many American airports are in terrible condition.” The banker added that European airports are held to higher standards, and the wealthy may be content with commercial flights, just like the rest of us.
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If prices dropped, travelers on this side of the Atlantic might be able to ignore such objections: Flexjet is a pioneer of fractional ownership, in which customers buy a share of an aircraft, usually one-eighth or one-sixteenth, which can cost between $1.6 million and $5 million, depending on the size of the plane.
Customers sign a five-year contract, paying at least 22,600 euros (19,000 pounds) per month during which they guarantee the aircraft will always be available, plus an extra fee for each flight. As a result, many of their customers rarely ever fly on an aircraft in which they actually own shares.
After five years, customers can choose to sell their shares to Flexjet, hold onto them and renew them, or exchange them for shares in another aircraft.
Bigger rival NetJets, which billionaire owner Buffett claims is “in a class of its own” and has “done what Ferrari did for the auto industry,” is rolling out its own version of the model.
Private jets are expensive, but they're also exclusive.
Stephen Beaudette
Vista, the third-largest private jet operator, is promoting shared charter, which allows individuals to reserve a seat on a flight, a bit like Uber. This may seem like a contradiction, as private jets are meant to offer exclusivity and privacy, but it lowers charter costs for original customers while also reducing the carbon footprint per passenger.
Private jet flying is booming, but new data shows that departures from Europe through 2024 are down 1 percent year-over-year. But Rich is an eternal optimist. He says it's a mistake to think of Europe in isolation. A plane like the G650 can circle the globe with just one stop, so it makes sense to partner with wealthy entrepreneurs in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.
“We found that in Europe there is a lot of traffic to the Middle East. A lot of people go from the Middle East to Europe, so opening up the Middle East is a big strategy for us to ensure there is enough traffic.”
And Rich has one final appeal to the ultra-wealthy: “Remember, when you fly for us, we can't track you. If you have a corporate jet, everybody knows the registration number of that jet. Take Elon Musk, for example. Everybody knows his number. But when he flies for us, we don't know which of our 300 planes he's on.”
