Watching Your Back

Are you a private flyer? That very fact increases your security risk-something protection agencies are paid to mitigate. Just how hard you want to roll, though, is up to you.

- Michael Verdon

WITH HELICOPTERS AS backup, the black SUVs race in formation behind speeding squad cars as a drone sweeps the side streets. But this isn't Baghdad or Caracas-it's Detroit, with visiting Saudi ambassador Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz AI Saud arriving by private jet. "That was highly unusual," says Mike Bunk, chief operations officer of Detroit Executive Group, part of a security detail organised by the US State Department and supported by local police. "But when a threat level is that high, the response has to match it."

Such calls to action are on the increase in the world of private aviation. The public's eagerness to track aircraft belonging to the likes of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift, as well as to high-profile CEOs, correlates to recent growth in demand for enhanced security among the industry's customer base. "That, and targeting private jets by environmental activists, has resulted in an uptick in requests for executive protection and aircraft-asset protection," says Brian Leek, managing director of Global Protective Solutions at Crisis24, a Montreal-based firm that specialises in security for corporate clients and ultra-high-net-worth individuals around the world.