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A Citation XL, a medium-sized jet that holds 7-8 passengers, has a built in lavatory, and is the world’s best selling private jet. It sells for about 13 million
Inside a Citation XL, a medium-sized jet that holds 7-8 passengers, has a built in lavatory, and is the world’s best selling private jet.
The Citation Mustang is a small jet that holds 4 passengers- and sells for about $4 million.
Inside the “cozy but sleek” four-passenger Citation Mustang- perfect for a quick trip to Vegas, right? Inside it feels like a nice passenger sedan.
Passengers can walk around in the 6-ft tall cabin of a 10-seat Challenger 600 private jet. It sells for about $20 million. This long-range jet can zip across the US without having to stop for fuel
Passengers can walk around in the 6-ft tall cabin of a 10-seat Challenger 600 private jet. It sells for about $20 million
The Executive version of the Boeing 727 is still flying, and sells for about $100 million.
Inside the Executive version of the good old Boeing 727 workhorse seats 35. Cabin layouts can include state rooms, large bathrooms, dining areas and full bars, along with modern entertainment systems.
A Gulfstream G550 is the ultimate flying machine for the private jet set. It sells for about $50 million and seats 15 passengers. Its extremely long range means it can fly from New York to Tokyo.
JetSuiteX Embraer jet all dressed up with a red bow for inaugural flights in 2016 at Concord airport
Chris McGinnis is 6 feet tall and his head touches the ceiling on an Embraer 135- note that there are no overhead bins
JetSuiteX tail and Concord Airport tower
Walking out to see our Surf Air Pilatus PC-12 plane with an enormous four-blade prop and seats for 8 passengers. The walk from the terminal to the plane is about one minute!
Onboard Surf Air’s Pilatus PC-12 there are four seats that face each other, and then four more in the rear that face forward. You have to duck down to board. When flying the plane is remarkably quiet– conversation is easy, and encouraged– there’s a club-like camaraderie onboard.
Have you ever sat around with a group of friends and dreamt about how much it might cost to rent a private jet to fly down to Mexico or Las Vegas for a long weekend?
Or maybe you are a small business owner hoping to jet you and your staff to an all-hands-on-deck meeting in New York?
A few years ago, a large contingent of my friends in the Bay Area flew commercial to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for a big wedding, and dealt with flight delays, bad traffic and slow ferries but we all got there. At the time, we wondered how much we’d have paid to fly private.
When I’ve tried to determine a ballpark figure before, I’ve always been faced with an unwieldy process where I have to call and talk to someone who usually has more questions about me that I do about them.
Now I can find out– quickly and easily. PrivateFly.com offers a live online booking service for private charter flights. It has access to about 7,000 aircraft around the world. It works pretty much like Expedia, Google flights, or United.com– just enter your destination, dates, number of passengers and boom, you get an estimated price.
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So in a few clicks, it appears I can jump on a small jet with five amigos and fly from the Bay Area down to Puerto Vallarta and back in late October for about for about $44,000, or about $7,333 each. That would be flying nonstop on a medium-sized jet like a Challenger XL (see slideshow at the top of this post). We could go cheaper ($36,000) on a smaller jet that would have to stop once for fuel.
A successful Bay Area entrepreneur who wants to fly in style to New York City to sign and celebrate a big business deal would pay about $39,000 round trip. That’s the tab to fly eight people on a medium- sized jet like a Hawker or LearJet round trip from San Francisco to Teterboro airport which is where big shots in the Big Apple touch down. (The price comes out to about $4,900 per passenger– 2-3 times as much as you’d pay to fly in first class on a commercial airliner and land at Newark.)
In an interview, PrivateFly’s Geoff Villano said that the average age of the typical private jet flyer is about 40 years old these days– significantly younger than when the company started in 2008. He attributes this to the great wealth created by young tech titans who appreciate the ease of booking via an app or website.
If I wanted to fly private with 10 friends from San Francisco to Martha’s Vineyard next summer, we’d pay about $105,000 for the honor of flying on our very own long-range jet, such as a Challenger, Falcon or Gulfstream. That would come out to about $10,500 each. If we took a smaller group, let’s say six, we could do it for about $68,000– but that would not save much per person.
The Gulfstream G550 is a jetsetter’s dream plane. It seats 15 and can fly from New York to Tokyo in 14 hours without stopping for fuel. It’s unique wide oval windows make this jet easy to spot on runways. It sells for about $50 million.
And then there’s the fantasy of flying down to Las Vegas for the weekend. According to PrivateFly, I could fly four of us down there from SFO this Friday for about $7,000 roundtrip on an Embraer Phenon or Cessna Citation. I could do it on the cheap flying with a propeller instead of a jet for about $5,000.
Villano says that PrivateFly’s most heavily booked routes include New York-Florida, LA-Las Vegas and LA-SF. He also says that many clients book private jets to fly into smaller airports or more remote locations not served by airlines.
If those prices are too dear, you can try “almost private” flying on the likes of JetSuiteX, Blackbird or SurfAir, which fly smaller planes out of general aviation airports in or near big cities and resorts in California. With these services, you likely will hitch a ride with a small group of strangers, so it’s not truly “private.”
Where do you dream of flying private? Who’d you bring along and why? Tell us about your fantasy in the comments!
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Chris McGinnis is the founder of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis.
Chris McGinnis is the senior travel correspondent for SFGate. Email Chris
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