Private Jets – Saving Time and Nerves
How is it possible to turn an ordinary business trip into an irritating and unbearable experience? Just one annoying trifle, an insignificant delay, at the beginning of the journey can turn a small but important business trip into a nightmare. Imagine that a typical official from the Department for Transport, living near London, needed to travel to Bordeaux for an important transport conference. The distance between these two places is 455 miles.
The plan was to take the train from home to London and connect to a train to Heathrow. From the airport it was a flight to Paris, then a flight from Paris to Bordeaux. So our official should start at 6-43 AM and arrive at 2 PM local time in Bordeaux.
Life does not always follow plans. The train at 6-43 was late and our official missed his connection for the train to Heathrow. He caught the next airport train, but found out at the airport that the flight was cancelled. Eventually, sharing a cramped taxi with three strangers, he took a 90 minute ride to London City Airport – to catch a plane from there. The representative of the Department for Transport arrived at Paris at 2-30 PM. Fortunately he had rebooked the journey to Bordeaux to be on the 4-30 PM flight, but this flight was cancelled and he did not leave Paris until 6-30PM, arriving at Bordeaux airport at 7-45PM local time, with the trip to his hotel still to come. So he was nearly 6 hours late – taking 12 hours to travel some 500 miles.
The conference started a day later so he didn’t miss any important meetings but he lost productive time and got an unforgettable feeling of being a small insect in a very big slow machine. After discussing some important air transport problems at the conference in Bordeaux the British bureaucrat hoped that the way back to London would be more pleasant. The journey began well enough, but at the Paris airport the plane had a technical problem so his flight was delayed and the passengers did not know when they would finally return.
A business representative in the same position could have seen a real impact on their company’s fortunes. And, whoever has to endure such disruption suffers loss of productivity and a lot of wasted time. With the help of a private charter a traveler could escape all of these problems. Embraer’s light jet Phenom 300 could take a person from London to Bordeaux for less than two hours, with Cessna`s Citation Mustang it will take only just over an hour. Of course someone can say that travelling by business jet is a senseless waste and just a desire for unnecessary luxury. But as Cessna said in its statement, 86% of those who use business aircraft aren’t at the senior executive level. And most of the private jets are not luxurious excess but just a way of saving money.