Wings On Demand

New planes, wider markets, more flexibility – private skies promise better ways to fly

- Jerome Greer Chandler

Old definitions are dying by the dozens each day, and we scramble to rewrite digital dictionaries to keep up. So it is with the business jet – that one-time corporate bauble signifying success or excess that’s become (some argue) an essential tool of business travelers on momentous missions.

Over the last quarter-century Gary Gennari has witnessed the metamorphosis up-close and personally. When Priester Aviation’s senior vice president of charter first started, he says “it was mostly a relationship business. We were dealing with the likes of the Rockefellers and the Whitneys. That was the caliber of people that chartered aircraft.” Now, Gennari says, “the market has developed so much.”

Then what had been a toy became a tool, as corporations sought to make the most of high-value business travelers’ time. Business jets didn’t exactly become mass transportation, but corporations bought them, leased them and chartered them as never before. Their prime selling point was, and remains, enhanced productivity for senior executives on an increasingly planet wide stage.

Next, in the mid-1980s, “the whole market shifted,” with the advent of fractional ownership, Gennari explains. Propelled by fractional ownership juggernaut NetJets, the concept took off, especially among companies disenchanted with the traditional charter concept. With the fractional model, “one of their big selling points was that you pay only point-to-point pricing – ‘live hours’ (the time during which passengers were on board). “In charter you also pay ferry time: If people flew one way down to Florida and wanted to come back one week later, they’d fly back empty.”