The Sensible Skies

Bradley Boyle is vice president of sales and marketing at JetChoice, a St. Paul–based operator that provides private jet membership services. He says his pilots typically avoid large international airports. “Our goal is to fly safely into a regional airport that is as close to the final destination of our member as possible,” he explains. “We’ve been averaging less than eight miles to the actual meeting spot. That, of course . . . significantly reduces ground time.”

He says JetChoice flies point to point, with no delay: “We tell our members that [they] are six minutes from the gate to the air with JetChoice at the downtown St. Paul airport. If you flew out of a facility at the Minneapolis airport, you might be 28th for takeoff.”

Myth: Unjustifiable Expense

There’s no doubt planes are expensive. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. For starters, there are several ways to fly privately, and not all of them are a big commitment. You can charter planes, own a fractional share in an aircraft, subscribe to a jet service, or own your own plane (with or without an outsourced management contract).

“Everything has its niche,” says Rohlfing. “If you’re flying 50 to 100 hours a year, you’d want to charter, because you can’t afford to own your own airplane. It’d probably be too cost prohibitive to own even a share of one. But once you get to about the 100-hour mark, then it makes sense to own maybe a half an airplane. You have access to it when you want it, and it’s there. You’re using it quite a bit at that point. Our clients fly anywhere from 200 to 600 or 700 hours a year, so they want their own airplane.”

Bear in mind that a jet, however small, isn’t the only option. Some users, such as salespeople who travel a lot for small start-ups, choose cheaper single-engine planes instead.

Still, most of the time, private flights end up costing around one-and-a-half times as much as first-class airline travel. So how does it make sense financially? Most importantly, a corporate plane can prevent unnecessary overnight stays. Brent Behn, president of Golden Valley–based Behn, Inc. (which operates a fractional aircraft firm called OurPlane, Inc., and an aviation consultancy called Bullseye Aviation), says people tend to forget that part of the equation.

“Maybe you look at a round-trip airfare ticket between here and Des Moines and it’s $600, or you can fly your own airplane and that’s going to be $900,” he says, by way of example. “Well, it’s too expensive—why would I want to do that? But what time do you save going through security and eliminating the overnight? How much does it help you to be able to utilize your own schedule and work on the airplane?”

It’s hard to justify owning or chartering a plane on the cost of flights alone, Batchelder says. “What people typically have to do is factor in what their time is worth,” he says.