If you’ve ever flown, whether for business or pleasure, chances are you have thought about what it would take to charter a private jet. The benefits are obvious: flexible schedules, custom flight paths and of course, avoiding all the inconveniences of flying commercial.
Business travelers take an average of 15 business trips by air every six months. In fact, about 8 million of us fly every day, whether for work or play. While chartered flights can be pricey, they offer other advantages such as flexibility and the ability to get into the air quickly when time is of the essence. quite often a chartered flight is also the most convenient way to get to a desired location. Close to 50% of business aircraft flights are to an airport where few or no commercials airlines travel, and as much as a third of flights are to secondary airports. Those who charter a private jet also value their privacy and such aircraft charter services often offer VIP services to help protect the privacy of passengers.
Jet charter services also offer more efficient working in-air conditions, allowing individuals and companies to capitalize on the time during a flight to get things done. Research has shown that passengers spend about 36% of their time on a company-operated jet in meetings with colleagues and business partners, just under a third of their time doing other work and the rest in leisure activities such as sleeping or reading. Commercial flights are much less conducive to work; most business passengers report a 40% drop in productivity on commercial flights in contrast to the 20% increase reported by charter flights.
Comfort is also a consideration — and can make a difference in productivity too. Almost a third of those polled in a recent TripAdvisor study listed comfortable seating as the biggest improvement airlines could make. Similarly, just over 40% of airline passengers cited an expansion in legroom as the biggest improvement airlines could make. Private jet charters mean never having to fight over that window or aisle seat again.
The ability to charter a private jet means you can safely fly in and out of more than 5,000 public use US airports, more than 100 times those reached by commercial airlines. There are more than 2,100 air charter operators across the USA, all of which are required to have an Air Carrier or Commercial Operating Certificate issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Their Operations Specifications must contain company names, authorizations and limitations. The Cessna Citation Excel, also known as the Citation XLS and XLS+, tops the list of most popular charter plane in the US and took off on 144,302 flights in 2012.