The World Of Private Jets

this week the luxury channel takes to the sky and some of the world's most spectacular private jets I believe that over time we will all move around the planet in a very different way selling planes to rich people is more fun than rock and roll this is rock and roll for grownups I love flying these pens we're flying twenty-seven twenty-eight thousand feet it's landing on shorter runways it's using this fuel it's cost-effective and it's a pleasure it's just great fun you don't have to get to the airport two hours ahead get there ten minutes ahead but your luggage in the plane you go once you've experienced it it's tough to go back the other way in this program we take a look at some of the flying machines which carry the wealthiest people on the planet between their transcontinental engagements we meet the man who designs the interiors of some of these flying concerts fly around the world with tag aviation and catch a sneak preview of the world's first supersonic private jet for the last five years the private jet business has been steadily on the rise order backlogs are bulging waiting times have been getting longer and most importantly brand-new machines from all of the world's biggest manufacturers are coming onto the menu but clouds have gathered on the horizon it's very interesting times demand is down by 40% globally manufacturers are suffering we've heard about the layoffs but it's an industry which isn't going to disappear overnight total value bits about 170 billion dollars and employs hundreds of thousands of people engineers designers total service providers it's just phenomenal really it we flew into Geneva for the 9th annual Ebates show to find out how the movers and shakers in business aviation are responding to the new challenges over 400 manufacturers Airlines and brokerage firms applying their wares atmospheres show and across the road at Geneva International Airport the 10,000 attendees were treated to a sprawling atrium of 65 new business aircraft fueled up ready for takeoff PBS is trance for a potential owner or an existing owner to see the whole range of aircraft that are available it's also a good chance to meet the manufactures I tend to be very low-profile it's very discreet you know you wouldn't have no idea that you're standing next to a buyer if you're if you're walking into an aircraft airbus has been in commercial aviation for almost 40 years and today the company employs around 57 thousand people across four countries producing over half of the world's jet airliners the company's private jets are produced by Airbus corporate jet liners and they've sold more than a hundred of these planes in the 12 years since the sideline began we make the world's most modern airliners and we take those airliners and we turn them into if you're going to a g20 summit you'd better arrive otherwise your voice is not going to be heard our Airbus corporate jet customers arrive the billionaire's or well on the way to becoming billionaires naturally the sort of person who Forks out millions of pounds were an aeroplane is liable to be a little fussy and chief cabin attendant or shank has seen it all I'm an old Fox into this business as you can see and I have gray hair sometimes also because of these papers you need to have some life experience because you have sometimes very special passengers you would never find somewhere else so people they neighbor flew with regular airline they know only private aircraft we are not allowed to give you names but we fly presidents we fly royal and we fly rich families there are many many stories I was planned to have 12 children only children I organized everything with balloons I had only comics I had a big max cage and all four kids and then I got 12 African presidents you know and I asked them would you like to eat this chunk food or do we have to wait for catering and they still remember the chomp foot they had so much fun with the comics and everything and they still remember this like private jets cost money lots of money a new one can set you back up to four hundred million dollars it'll cost you a hundred thousand dollars just to install a shower the sofa that year City nine cost tens of thousands of dollars and that because it's any different than yourself at home but it has to withstand all the rigors of flame testing and structural components an airplane as you know flies and so there is a great deal of business related to the safety so how do these jet setters justify such extravagance the first guy that showed up with an automobile was a fat cat well no he was more efficient he could cover more territory and do more sales at the top of a multinational company the chief executive may be getting paid 15 million dollars a year and it doesn't make sense for that guy to spend hours sitting around an airport while it's certainly true that owning your own jet is largely the preserve of the mega-rich enjoying the benefits of business aviation is becoming ever more affordable using aircraft has never been so accessible there are a number of innovative products which have been launched over the last eight to nine years the fractional model which is pioneered by a chapel which is a truly United States company jets what you do is you buy a physical share of an aircraft and the costs are then apportioned amongst a group of fires and you've got guaranteed availability anywhere in the world we're one of the largest airlines in the world but usually beneath the radar so to speak our customers are a cross-section of just about everybody out there who uses business aviation so of course corporations and governments high net worth individuals there are some celebrities at the very high end of the spectrum whether it's sports stars or rock and roll stars who use our service but for the most part it's just people whose time is very important and if you want to save money versus the cost of buying their own aircraft there are also air taxi operators blink in the UK being one and the idea is that hop from city to city cost per seat is relatively low for the jet market my business partner I started this about three years ago when we were doing our MBAs in the United States and we saw the power of the very light jets as a disruptive technology it's got the power to change how people travel and so we said you know what there's got to be an opportunity here the idea was was that if we bought a sub fleet of these things and integrated them in they can put someone who makes less than $50,000 a year of annual salary on one of the planes and would save them money while borrowing someone else's plane is one way to break into the market nowadays even owning your own is becoming increasingly possible Honda is possibly more famous for ferrying people about on the road than in the sky but for three and a half million dollars they'll sell you one of these a brand new Honda jet Aviation has always been a dream for Honda our associates love a challenge we build some of the world's best automobiles and motorcycles and now we're taking to the air with the HondaJet many of our customers are what we call owner-operators they're people who fly planes themselves we offer free flight training and you would come to our facility in the United States we would train you how to fly the HondaJet this aircraft will be single pilot certified so an individual would be able to fly the HondaJet maybe with his family off on a vacation over the weekend but he could also use it for business during the week so it's really a great way to travel you don't have to be a Mick Jagger to fly in a private church traditionally the so called big five and business jet production has been made up of Cessna Dassault Gulfstream Bombardier who built the gates Learjet and Hawker Beechcraft and encouragingly all of these firms currently have at least one new model in development however Brazilian based Embraer is rapidly turning the big five into a big six by adding to their portfolio with this the 36 metre lineage 1000 Embraer's largest jet today welcome on board the lineage 1000 from Umbria it's a pleasure to have you on board this is the basically the place where we prepare the meat and the meals and then the drinks the area where we are here right now is an area for the crew where they can rest you can sit on rest and then go back for their duties later on this area here is a for the passenger where they stay they have a dinner or lunch they can watch movies this is the place where people can rest they can some aircraft not this one not a specific one have a bed here a king-sized bed and they can even have a shower here when the a trough is fitted with the equipment which is not the case for that airplane you can get this plane for forty forty three million dollars so it's four thousand five hundred nautical mile airplane for nineteen people and lots of room the convenience that a business jet provides is is is unparalleled you cannot visit the same amount of places in a given timeframe using commercial transport then then you can do it with a business jet with a twenty five percent share in the traditional market for business jets American based Gulfstream Aerospace part of the General Dynamics group are the Lords of the top end Gulfstream builds these aircraft and sells them the first Gulfstream the G one was the first purpose-built business aircraft a mobile office a time-saving machine that enables you to work comfortably but to travel safely reliably dependably around the world can you imagine not having a cellphone or a blackberry in today's environment for the business person doing business internationally this is actually a distinct advantage over the guy that's got a fly commercial the Gulfstream g550 the aircraft that we're currently sitting in is our top-of-the-line aircraft the air in this cabin is recycled every 90 seconds you can use your laptop at 50,000 feet in most places around the world same speed as you do in your home office we don't have a show special here but if you've got fifty two million dollars we'll talk to her if you would be one coming up in part two we meet a designer of private jet interiors and take a look at the fastest business jet in history london-based designer Andrew winch has been working out interiors for houses and yachts for 23 years but in 2003 he was commissioned to design his first aeroplane interior in collaboration with Lufthansa for this towering 737 people enjoy building their own planes because they are very busy people and they like to be in their own environment they are time poor we went to visit Andrew at his studio on the edge of the Thames in barns which he had converted from a fire station in 1987 after 23 years of working as a designer we built this business up my wife and I and our my colleagues here now mate four other directors we are 35 people here we're all designers were all in the design industry all of us and we're all derd in in the business of delivering a successful product designing anything for me starts with a discussion with the client it's always better when it's direct from the guy is paying the bill and it's actually talking to them so I've got no worries about talking kings queens shakes industry oligarchs I sit here with them at the table they join me in this room and within probably an hour and a half I know exactly what they want once we understand the clients dream we will turn that dream into paper drawings we will take pencils take crayons take take pens and take the computer and we will start to plan with dimensions the whole arrangement of the plane will also look at the fuselage the livery the embodiment of the design idea then there are areas which have structure and you have to attach to certain structure there will be areas that have to have weight considerations for the balance of the plane so will turn all of those into drawings and then we'll turn them into 3d sketches back with pencil and then we'll turn those into probably catalyst trations will do watercolor paintings in the interior and then often like the pictures behind me we'll turn them into full three-dimensional CAD visualizations we will create a walk through a one-to-one walkthrough of the entire plane where every object in that CAD visualization has been three dimensionally drawn from a coca-cola cam to a new design share so we do go to a very very finite level of detail I'm delivering their dream back to them and creating the reality at 80 years old and with a multitude of business jets fighter aircraft rockets and even conceptual space ships under its belt France's own Dassault Aviation have made aviation technology a way of life it's a close to a century history so to make it much is difficult that the company was founded by a genius engineer mr. and entrepreneur mr. Marcel des Eaux and who started to make himself known in aviation at the very beginning of aviation by creating a propeller that was used on the first fighters during the first world war on the spot which romatic increased the efficiency of his these first fighter jets altogether the company produced over 7,000 fighter jets which is quite considerable for a European manufacturer The Mirage name became known worldwide and contributed to build the image of the company as one of the leading fighter jet manufacturer mastering technology not only in aerodynamics but also in system design if you want to fly at two times the speed of sound for a fighter jets you can do that if you don't have good aerodynamic engineer Nestle's twenty three and a half meter Falken 7x is the first business jet to make full use of the groundbreaking fly-by-wire technology here redundant computer systems are installed between the pilot from the aeroplanes mechanical surfaces so if he makes a mistake his own plane will set him right we have to be competitive this expand these Jets are expensive in the state they have a say the national business aircraft association no plane no game so really a business jet is a profit machine while technology can doubtless make you more efficient it can also help simply to enrich the flying experience itself in October 1977 history was made when a Pan Am Boeing 747sp was flown around the world in a little over 53 incredibly the record remained unbroken for more than three decades until November of last year when a team of pilots from uk-based tag aviation decided they try it themselves corporation probably represents a number of things and clearly it's a business tool it's obviously a ledger tool for many people but it's also fun it's also something that can can allow you to to push the envelope in terms of aviation hence 31 years this record stood now the good aircraft have the same range and as a 747 the same speed virtually as a 747 and yet are small enough and nimble enough to pull this off this one of those records that had lead in beaten I can say Concorde did the set a lot of records are complete out of reach reports business speed and with this airplane we managed to read it which was not possible you know with any other plane before although the battle was to be waged in the air it would be won or lost on the ground in order to break the record that team would have to complete each of their five fuel stops in under 40 minutes but incredibly the men were back in the air after an average of only 32 minutes ultimately smashing the 1977 record by almost an hour the whole thing when I pop it I mean it was absolutely remarkable we were very very well organized we had the five pilots everybody knew when their duty time was come on and off so everybody knew on the rest period was coming anytime you get the flight the chances of you having five flights at one after the other they're all on time everybody does their job perfectly nobody makes a mistake it's pretty unusual the highlight for us really whispers really back we clearly the pilots and the crew have been on the aircraft for 52 hours we were able to have a party all the family where there is the aircraft taxied in we had our fire fire trucks created an arch for the aircraft the taxis I mean I dream about it all the time I still find myself on some while dreaming that oh I still have that replica mean I wake up saying no I've done it because o it really is a dream come true traveling at 35,000 feet however has its drawbacks we are by definition an emitter we pollute carbon emission is quite a topical subject not just in in aviation but across the board and its issue which needs to be addressed and there has to be some accountability the flip side of that is obviously that jobs are being created and economies are growing because of these aircraft we're very aware of the environment and we do everything we can to improve that said aviation is only 2% of the carbon dioxide emissions in the world so if the world is serious about reducing carbon dioxide then you need to go where the big generators are which is essentially the heating of buildings the cooling of buildings and cars - all are variable but one of the manufacturers I think I could probably highlight they've been able to reduce emission on some of the current aircraft between 25 and 30% EU has some rules which which forthcoming by 2012 any business aircraft flying over European airspace must have a carbon emission scheme set up in-house we're not going back to a horse and cart Society innovation technology and crisp clear thinking combined with good capital initiatives and create great solutions for a modern way of life in 1911 a farmer from rural Kansas by the name of Clyde Cessna began building small aeroplanes out of wood and fabric and testing them on the vast Salt Flats of Oklahoma nearly a century of the Cessna Aircraft Company has delivered over 190,000 aeroplanes more than any other firm in the history of aviation Cessnas chief executive Jack Pelton was a busy man but we caught up with him out on the apron to see what they were up to we feel that we've taught the world to fly if you look at 192 thousand airplanes we've delivered in our history we start at the beginning with the single-engine piston airplanes all the way up to the citation 10 business jet which is the fastest commercial jet produced today the quality of the product itself what we're getting is for the price point you're getting more features and more benefits longer range better speeds better fuel efficiencies over the last 30 years jet engines have become far more efficient than they were years ago and each year they continue to get better so the economics are coming down as the technology comes up Cessna our manufacturer which you would probably start off flying with if you're building up your hours and you want to get a license and Cessnas argument is that once they've got you they want you to trade you up from a propeller to a jet the idea is that they want to keep you in the family and they've got the range of aircraft to do that Cessna Citation 10 business jet is that world's fastest civilian aircraft promising to take you from New York to Los Angeles in under four hours the aircraft we're sitting in right now is our citation 10 it's the flagship of our fleet our largest aircraft it travels at 0.92 mock the citation jet range is the sort of mercedes-benz of the skies very reliable very efficient you could go anywhere in the world and you'll be able to get an aircraft service very very quickly this aircraft in the current block that we're selling is approximately 21 million dollars the only way to go faster is to join the Air Force and fly fighters you'd have to say then that if time is money then there's no other plane worth considering or is there this is the world's first supersonic private jet the American firm who've designed it say that when you receive your plane in late 2015 it'll get you from New York to Tokyo in nine and a half hours that includes a one-hour fuel stop provided you've got 90 million dollars of course we're going to change jet travel with speed as we all know that the Concord was it was a beautiful airplane it was of course no longer available but Concord had certain problems that weren't so obvious at its beauty and that was it was good for supersonic travel but it was very expensive it burned a lot of fuel for its size and it could not travel below the speed of sound very efficiently and it was very poor in terms of airport performance landing and takeoff so we have addressed all of those problems as we are equivalent to a subsonic business jet except that we can also go twice as fast but you need to over long distances but in five years time will anybody be around to buy this incredible machine the independent research group teal based on the current forecasts are looking at the economy approving in the private aviation around 2012 I expect this forecast is pretty accurate of course we're in a recession which is likely to last next couple years a lot of companies are adjusting their balance sheets and I think we're getting used to a brand new landscape and once companies beginning to realize that they need to plan for the next step forward we'll see the forecasts actually materialize you

Channel: TheLuxuryChannel

Views: 1,031,794

Rating: 4.7683535 out of 5

Keywords: Business Jet (Industry), Aviation (Industry), Planes, Private Jets

Id: hNd3yS9VB2c

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/FuckYoureGrammar]

Its like everyone interviewed was a salesman.

[u/[deleted]]

this not a 2013 documentary, it is from 2009.

[u/TheRiverStyx]

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? I've seen that already.

[u/GorgonZap]

When the guy said the private supersonic jet would cost $90 million, my first thought was that Bill Gates could buy one and wouldn't even feel the difference in his fortune.

[u/[deleted]]

Are the rich insane? None of these planes had guns fitted to them. What kind of fun is that when life is just business and not taking a wince at hunting deer from 30,000 feet? I feel sorry for the rich.

[u/[deleted]]

2009, OP. Date is after the credits.