Service: Vistajet Learjet 60XR flight London-Nice-London
Price: 4,333 euros
Online: http://www.vistajet.com
Travelling by private jet is a luxury few of us will ever pay for out of our own pockets. It is typically paid for by multinational companies, who then might bestow their generosity on the rest of us little people with an occasional jolly in their planes.
So it was for me as I was invited to interview Thomas Flohr, the owner of Vistajet, a private jet leasing business, on his 42 metre yacht moored in Monaco, the heart of the French Riviera.
I approached the trip with journalistic cynicism: Mr Flohr has something to sell to the readers of Arabian Business and he’s sparing no expense to get a glowing report.
The chauffer-driven top-of-the-line Mercedes S-Class that picked me up from home was a reasonable start. But given that it was 5.30am when we set off, my first thought was not so much, ‘thanks for the luxury ride,’ but more, ‘who on earth woke me up at this time in the morning?’
I thought private jet travel was about building the schedule around the individual. I would have preferred my schedule to begin after 8am.
By the time I’d arrived at the private terminal at Farnborough, a medium-sized town south-west of London, at 7am, I’d snatched another hour’s sleep and was ready to face the day.
VistaJet’s Bombardier Learjet 60XR accommodates up to six passengers, two pilots and a flight attendant. Four individual seats and a bench seat for three people, all in cream leather are comfortable enough, if a little cramped. There is considerably less leg room than a commercial business class seat, and few other frills for individual passengers. There are no individual TV screens or phones, although there are two screens showing the flight path, and an onboard phone that any passenger can use.
With a range of just under 4500km - a flight that will get you from Dubai to Moscow or the east coast of India, but not to Zurich or Singapore - this is not a plane for the long haul. Its top speed of 863km/h, almost as fast as a commercial airliner, is what will interest busy executives most. It rocketed us from London to Nice in just over an hour and a half and will do the Middle East to central Europe in around five hours.
If you want to reach London from the Middle East, Vistajet can offer the Challenger 605 or the largest plane in its fleet, the Global Express, which will get from the Middle East to Australia, non-stop, and offers considerably more space and comfort, including flat beds.
Our flight was full: three reporters, a TV presenter, her camerawoman, our PR host, the flight attendant and two pilots. We were all travelling light, but the only place to put laptop cases and cameras was in the toilet, an inconvenience for anybody needing the convenience.
Breakfast was business class standard, and the uneventful flight was forgettable. There is little opportunity to wow passengers in a cabin measuring 1.2m by 5.4m. Perhaps the only perk is access to the flight deck, so you can get a truly bird’s eye view of proceedings.
We landed at Nice airport and whizzed through a private security channel, but then found ourselves in the same terminal as the Easyjet passengers who had just paid around 4,200 euros less for the same journey.
The price of the flight is an interesting equation. Vistajet wants people to buy “programmes”, which give them a certain number of flying hours for a fixed annual price. This, the company claims, allows them to offer a better quality of service at a lower price than the market’s biggest player, Netjets.
The minimum programme of 100 hours per year costs 625,000 euros. Our return trip used up four hours flying time, costing 26,000 euros, or 4,333 euros per person (you pay per hour for the plane, not per person).
The actual cost over the course of a year is more complicated than this, but it gives you a rough idea of affordability. Booking ad hoc flights on demand is typically more expensive.
Despite the fact that we enjoyed a delicious lunch in glorious sunshine with impeccable hosts and hospitality on Mr Flohr’s staggeringly beautiful boat in Monaco, I still had a niggling feeling of being underwhelmed by the whole private jet experience.
Yes, we got to Monaco comfortably before lunch, but so did the Easyjet passengers we mixed with at Nice airport. Of course, we did the trip in considerable style, but nothing like the luxury you get on the top deck of an Emirates A380.
These are unfair comparisons, and not entirely relevant for Vistajet’s target market of multi-millionaires who fall just shy of the wealth required to own a plane outright (a target market described by Mr Flohr as individuals with net worth of around $100-200 million).
And it was these customers that I had in mind when the private jet concept fell into place right at the end of our round trip.
The flight back to Farnborough was lifted by some amiable banter with my new found media friends and a few bottles of excellent Chablis. But I was still silently dreading what I expected to be a two hour journey from south-west of London, to my home north of London round the dreaded M25.
However, on landing at Farnborough, I discovered that the overnight stopover for the plane would be at London Luton Airport, a mere half an hour from my front door.
“Can I catch a lift?” I asked with my cheekiest winning smile. “Of course,” replied the pilot. I just need to make a phone call to clear it.
So, having dropped off my new chums at the airport nearest to their homes and offices, I was left alone on the 25 minute flight to the runway a stone’s throw from my house.
This, I discovered at last, is the reason for private aviation. It is not the leather seats, the private terminals, the chauffer driven transfers or even the bragging rights. It is the difference between catching a bus and calling for a taxi. You can drop your mates off at their place before carrying on to yours at any time of the day you choose.
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