How much does it cost to charter a private jet?
That’s the question when I’m talking to someone down the pub, that I’m asked the most often. They say, “There’s five of us going on a golf trip to Malaga, how much would it cost us Carol?” The price of a private jet charter is often misunderstood, and recently we’ve definitely seen a change in terms of people grouping up.
For example, we had three families on a Embraer Legacy, which is a 13-seat aircraft, for February half term. Because it’s three of them grouping up, it’s costing them about £7,000 for two families of four and one family of five. If you divide that up, it’s not as expensive as people think [£538 per person]. We’re seeing that more and more people are grouping up, putting more bums on seats and making it more affordable.
If you want to book a private jet flight is there anything in particular you should consider?
It pays to book further ahead. On the whole, most private jet customers book very late. On those peak days, less availability in the market means customers might have to charter a jet to come in from further afield, which makes it more expensive, or they might need to charter for a larger aircraft than they need because all the smaller jets are already chartered. It is very rare that we can’t charter someone, but the costs are simply altered by availability or location of available aircraft.
How does flying private differ from flying commercial?
Within reason, many more things in private aviation are possible then they are in commercial airlines. A very common filter that people would want to know is the aircraft’s age. They would want know, “can I have an aircraft that’s less than five years old?” Depending on the culture of who is travelling, we will sometimes have people that only want male pilots, for example, or they want a smoking aircraft in some cases, or they want to take their pets on board, or they want a particular colour interior. Sometimes you will have requests like the aircraft has to fly at a certain altitude because a passenger has poor health, and they only want to fly at a certain altitude. You’re not going to phone up Ryanair and ask that.
Which private jets are the most popular to charter?
There are some amazing aircraft out there for families. The Embraer Phenom 300 aircraft for example. Many people consider it a light jet but actually it’s really a medium jet. You’ve got six seats, a surprising amount of room on it, and yet it is priced extremely cost effectively. The world’s bestselling private jet is the Citation XL which has got the combination of cost effectiveness, space and range. The medium jet sector is extremely popular with families because you have the fantastic Gulfstreams and Bombardier Globals. They are expensive aircraft, there is no getting away from that. The volume in the private jet market is in the smaller or medium jets.
Where should someone fly if they are able to charter a private jet?
I personally think a really great destination is St Moritz. Or there’s Samedan airport which is ten minutes from St Moritz. It’s an amazingly beautiful approach and an absolute classic example of saving hours and hours over flying commercial. For people who fly in for a ski weekend for two or three nights, we are saving them up to ten hours of skiing time. People would often see flying into St Moritz as being all about the luxury, for the snow polo, but actually sometimes it’s about giving you an extra day of skiing. It’s one of the absolute no brainer reasons why people use private jets to just save themselves hours of time, and hours of hassle.
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