2007 G8 Summit Magazine - (Page 10) The Private Jet Industry biggest and most affluent corporations buy their own jets to shuttle personnel around the world without the logistical and security complications and delays of commercial air travel. For the very same reasons, smaller companies and independent entrepreneurs rely on charter and fractional-ownership private jet services. All in all, more and more business people are doing the math, and deciding that—as expensive as private jets appear at a glance—the costs are worth it. Many businesses require several hundreds of hours of annual flight time for their employees. In commercial travel, tickets are cheap, but over the course of a year, hundreds of hours of flight time translates into hundreds of hours’ worth of highpriced personnel waiting in luggage lines, security checks, and lobbies (not to mention whole days spent in hotels), and the business that can be conducted in flight is limited. Many companies come to the conclusion that what they save in hours and days, combined with what they earn in timely, favorable business deals, more than compensates for the costs of private jet travel. What’s more, the convenience and luxury translate into high morale and company prestige, and many deals are conducted right in the jets, where clients feel they’re getting star treatment. And for these clients to feel they’re getting star treatment is really saying something. The international private jet industry serves what A T A GLANCE, IT WOULD BE EASY to dismiss the private jet industry as nothing more than a supplier of decadent conceits for the benefit of the rich and famous: airborne mini-mansions—complete with gold-plated toilet seats—zooming to exotic destinations on a whim, whenever the owners are too impatient to cruise there in their massive luxury yachts. And it would be a big mistake to see it that way. The industry is far larger than its glitzy fringe, and far more essential to the global economy. From the ground up, there are manufacturers like Bombardier, Dassault, Gulfstream, and Embraer, hundreds of booking agencies (with internet entrepreneurs inventing new ways—almost daily—of saving money for everyone involved, while creating fortunes for themselves), scores of intensely competitive flight service providers like Skyjet International, NetJets, Sentient Jet, Jet Aviation Management, and Lufthansa Private Jet, and a broad, complex network of connected businesses pumping billions of dollars into the world economy. Consider the impact on the U.S. economy alone: According to the Annual Industry Review and 2007 Market Outlook of the GAMA (General Aviation Manufacturers Association), the industry “was responsible for driving the employment of more than 1.2 million people whose collective earnings exceeded $53 billion dollars,” and its overall outlay, money pumped into the economy—direct, indirect, and induced—totaled $150.3 billion. Bombadier—just one player in this big picture—reports $8.1 billion in revenues in 2006. Embraer alternates between being Brazil’s largest and second-largest exporter. With economic growth over the next several years projected at 10% in China, 7% in India, and 5% in Russia, the private jet industry is bound to expand its influence—and its benefits—around the world. It’s mostly about business. While there certainly are individuals who buy jets for largely indulgent reasons, the industry overwhelmingly, primarily, answers business needs. The | -10-
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