Your charter for the freedom of the skies

Taking advantage of the benefits of private jet charter lets you recapture the spirit of what flying should really all be about, and will totally suit your convenience, says HUGH COURTENAY

Just because we tend to take the achievements of the modern world for granted doesn’t make those achievements any less mind-boggling. A yearning to fly and shrink the world made the Wright Brothers devote their lives to aviation. They sowed the acorn; the oak sprang up almost overnight. It’s extraordinary to reflect that someone born in the year 1900, who would have been a three-year-old toddler when the Wright Brothers made their first legendary powered, sustained, controlled flight, could at the age of sixty-nine, have enjoyed seeing live TV footage of Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the moon.

Extraordinary as an indication of how fast aviation technology progressed, yes, but then the reason why it only took human beings sixty-six years to advance from first lurching clumsily but memorably into the sky at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to touching down on the moon has never been just a matter of technology. It was equally a matter of imagination and yearning... and the kind of sheer bloody-minded determination to succeed that has characterised our progression as a species.

By the 1960s, regular scheduled flights around the world for holidays or pleasure were an everyday reality, yet the high price of flying in those days kept flying glamorous. The very phrase ‘jet-set’, meaning the set of wealthy and fashionable people who frequently travelled by air, was coined around that time and says it all. Flying was glamorous in those days. Practically every movie thriller from the 1960s had a scene of a civilian jet taking off or landing; it was a short-cut way for movie-director to make their characters seem glamorous, exciting and - well - part of the jet-set.

But that was then, and this is now, as another 1960s phenomenon - The Monkees - told us. Today, flying in scheduled civilian jets, unless you’re very tolerant indeed, is often not very much fun at all, let alone glamorous.

Limitations on hand luggage have recently, following security clampdowns, made you lucky if you can take much more than a toothbrush and a paperback on the flight. Limitations on hold luggage are also troublesome, especially if you fly with a budget airline. On all types of scheduled flights you need to check in up to three hours before your flight takes off; you spend much of that time queuing and then very likely discovering you’re in the wrong queue anyway. The boarding process can seem to take ages, and often does, and when you’re finally on board you’re likely to find yourself sandwiched between strangers with all manner of delightful attributes, from sharp elbows, to territorial claims to the armrest, to flesh spillage into your personal space, to a fondness for eating extra-strength garlic.

You get a pretty good idea of what the experience of taking scheduled flights is like when you look at newspaper and magazine adverts placed by major airlines. Because they know they all basically fly similar aircraft, offer the same journey times, similarly disappointing meals and equally insincerely-smiling air crew, they mainly compete over tiny differences in leg-room, as if somehow these mean that you’ll really have enough space for your legs when you’re sitting down.

The advent (if one can use the word) of budget airlines has hardly helped to re-introduce glamour into the experience of flying by scheduled jet. For one thing, the budget prices often turn out not to be that cheap after all when the ingeniously-hidden hidden extras are factored in. Seating is of course on a chaotic first-come, first-served basis. As for in-cabin service, if you get a meal on board many budget airlines it will only be because you fortunately remembered to buy a cheese-and-tomato roll at the airport.

Other fun elements of budget flying include departures in the small hours of the morning, just when your body clock is anything but in the mood for your body to be flung into the sky at 150 mph; and flights to airports whose location bears about as much geographical resemblance to your destination as those mouth-watering cheeseburgers you see on the neon display boards in airport fast-food franchises bear to the squashed, damp, oozy object you get presented with when you actually buy one. Though in all fairness, one benefit of being presented with such a culinary delicacy is that it will at least get you into training for eating the kind of meals non-budget airlines usually serve in Economy class, and even in higher classes.

Besides, the very phrase ‘scheduled flights’ says it all. What airlines actually mean by this is that the flights suit their schedule, not yours, even assuming the flights actually take off on time. If your meetings or other arrangement don’t coincide with their schedules, well, that’s just your bad luck.

There’s the security angle, too. It would be completely wrong to suggest that scheduled jet flights aren’t safe; fortunately they are. The aircraft are technically highly reliable and the codes of practice enforced by national civil aviation bodies are focused around safety and is rigorously enforced. All the same, one unfortunate consequence of 9/11 - when the world made the unpleasant discovery that big, friendly, multi-coloured aircraft built to bring people together could be used as missiles by psychopaths - is that flying by scheduled jet nowadays often carries a psychological aspect of insecurity that doesn’t make it helpful to have a vivid imagination.

Overall, there isn’t usually much real fun to be had when you travel by scheduled flights today. Even First Class isn’t that great; it arrives at exactly the same, possibly inconvenient, time as Business and Economy, and the amenities are rarely up to much. Very often all that really happens in First Class is that you get a better meal and more leg-room, and pay through the nose for it.

Certainly, the way the aviation industry has developed, the experience of taking a scheduled flight doesn’t seem much of a fulfilment of the yearning to take to the air and shrinking the world that so motivated the Wright Brothers.

The question is, what’s the alternative?

As is usual whenever there’s a real need for something, there are companies out there specialising in meeting that need, and this is no exception. In the face of the increasingly disappointing experience offered by scheduled airlines, private air charter is potentially a tremendously attractive alternative, and by no means as expensive as you might imagine.

In private air charter, all the rules are different. You can expect; indeed you’re entitled to, every one of the following benefits:

• minimal limitations on hand or hold luggage
• opportunity to fly in small and medium-sized jets whose cabins are designed and laid out around the convenience of the passengers, not the airline
• ground transfer arrangements to suit your convenience, including pick-up by car (a luxury one, if you want it) from your home
• all sizes of airports are covered including small airports located conveniently close to your final, rather than interim, destination
• no queuing at all
• the privilege of checking-in just twenty minutes before the flight departs
• instant boarding
• privacy on the flight: you either fly alone or in a group of people - such as friends, relatives or colleagues - you¬ choose
• precisely the food and drink you want: you can specify this. It will be prepared by specialist luxury caterers, not by a vast airport kitchen
• departures at convenient times of the day based around your schedule
• no anxieties about security

Private jet charter is possible because of the enormous - to newcomers surprisingly enormous - availability of private jets around the world that would be otherwise standing idle if private jet charter companies were not making use of them. Some of these jets are owned by small airlines; others by corporations and governments; others by private individuals. Private jet charter companies employ a variety of techniques (my own firm, International Air Charter, uses a powerful proprietary software system) to monitor and arrange availability of private jet charter for customers, along with the experienced aircrews and in-cabin service from specialists (such as caterers) dedicated to the industry.

Flights themselves are arranged by experienced staff, who have substantial contact networks and offer a truly personal service. The essence of private jet charter is this personal service: you get to fly when, where from, and where to whatever best suits your convenience. Private jet charter is, in every sense, a truly personal, tailor-made flying service.

Indeed, a really good private charter company can arguably offer you an even better service than you’d enjoy if you actually owned your own jet. After all, your own jet may not always be precisely where you want it to be, and in any case it’s a terrifically expensive luxury.

As for the option of fractional jet ownership, if you look hard at the small print (and think hard about the huge costs) this really is little more than a supposed status-conferring gimmick. You don’t in any real sense own part of the plane anyway (if you think you do, wait for the shock when you optimistically try to sell your share at something close to the original price) and the chance of your ‘shared’ jet being actually available when and where you want it is minimal. In practice, all fractional jet ownership companies need to offer what is effectively their own charter service to help out ‘owners’ who want to travel outside the narrow availability of ‘their’ jet.

Ad hoc private jet charter has none of these drawbacks. It’s quite simply the best way to travel, and the cost is by no means as high as you might imagine: it typically works out at around twenty-five percent more, per person, than the price of scheduled First Class. But for busy, successful people working in demanding industries or just wanting to have a really great start to a well-deserved holiday, the price premium can seem trivial compared to the great convenience and all the benefits charter offers.

It’s not surprising, really, that more and more people are finding they don’t need to be Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko to conclude that in today’s aviation world, scheduled flights are for wimps.

Hugh Courtenay is chief executive of International Air Charter, Gable House, 239 Regents Park Road, London N3 3LF Tel: 020 8897 8979 E: sales@privatejetcharter.com www.privatejetcharter.com

For further information please contact:

Alison Wressell
Marketing Manager
International Air Charter

Tel: 020 8897 8979
E: alison.wressell@:privatejetcharter.com
www.privatejetcharter.com

Copy prepared for web © January 2011