Airline travel is stressful — the fight for carry-on baggage space; tight and uncomfortable seating arrangements; no privacy in which to conduct business en route; delays and cancellations that include little information flow and even fewer options.
Many senior executives travel at least once each week. If their trip has only two legs, he or she will travel about 100 legs per year. A business jet requires at least one hour less per leg than do the airlines. This includes parking, baggage check-in, security checks, boarding processes, departure delays, en route time, arrival delays, baggage claim, and ground transportation. One hundred hours lost in bite-sized chunks still adds up to more than two and one-half weeks of lost productivity for the people most influential in a company’s business.
Imagine then, being able to avoid all the hassle of airline travel plus being able to reclaim the equivalent of entire weeks of lost or wasted time.
That is the result when an executive can use a business aircraft instead of the airlines.
The new revolution in aviation could well center around the corporate aircraft. According to aviation’s most reliable research barometer, it is indicated that the graph is rising and as much as $94.4 billion will be spent over the next 10 years on over 9,000 aircraft in this category. The projections indicate a new ‘thought process’ in the corporate world especially in developing markets in the Gulf, Middle East and China and the Indian subcontinent.
According to reports, the lead will be held by Bombardier with Gulfstream a close second and Dassault bringing up the third position. Other major players are Raytheon and Cessna. The report also suggests that as many as 225 versions of corporate jets and regional jets worth $7.9 billion will find buyers over this time span.
Does this mean that future growth and demand for business jets will witness a sharp upward curve as technology widens the choice of available options and the upper end Business and First class traveler increasingly deserts the mainstream airlines with their rigid schedules and congestion for the more flexible and efficient transportation offered by the corporate jet?
There was a time when business jets were a status symbol, an elite form of transportation. That was way back in the ‘60s when governments, large corporations and rich individuals kept the order book for Sabreliners, Jetstars and Learjets reasonably busy, enough to generate profits of around $2.7 billion for the manufacturers in 1968.
Today, the business jet is more a commodity than an elite product, a necessity. It doesn’t merely save corporate time but enhances efficiency in an era where the ‘cult of productivity’ reigns supreme and economic progress is seen to lie in the more efficient use of capital and labor resources.
The quantity and quality of traveler productivity has two important aspects:
• En route work environment.
• Length/Distance of flight.
Surveys indicate en route productive time is at least 40 percent greater when travelers are on business aircraft. They can work and meet during the trip at their own convenience rather than submitting to the disruptions of the commercial airlines’ routines for departure, meal service, and prolonged pre-landing preparations.
Many executives say the quality of the work environment on company airplanes is even better than that of their offices. Imagine being able to swivel and adjust your seating arrangements to create a small conversation group with colleagues. On board corporate jets there are individual work surfaces, and access to digital phones, computers, facsimile machines, e-mail, and USBs much like back at the office. Unlike the office, though, you can shut it all off and focus uninterrupted on the task at hand, After all, who is going to be able to bother you at 43,000 feet?
Privacy and a discrete working atmosphere are equally important as well. Business aircraft passengers are free to discuss openly the matters at hand. By contrast, airline travel, even in first class, is a public environment that requires discretion. Private discussions on the airlines are easily overheard.
