If you ever wondered whether you’d get a ride in a corporate jet in your business travels, the odds are better than ever now.

With a major assist from the economic upturn, companies are buying, leasing and chartering nimble business jets in record numbers, thanks to financing that’s as sleek as their fuselages.

The popular method, of course, is fractional ownership promoted by NetJets, the pioneer of aircraft time-sharing (both jets and other planes).  Buy, say, one-eighth of a plane because you don’t need it 100 percent of the time to get around. The partial ownership entitles you to 100 hours of usage per year.

“If your aircraft isn’t available when you want it, you can draw on a larger pool of identical or similar aircraft fractionally owned or leased by others,” as Bailey & Partners, a firm specializing in private jets, points out. 

What you get are jets—on call—that cruise at between 480 mph and 560 mph with ranges between 1,600 miles and 6,000 miles.

So, what’s the sticker price for all this chauffeured speed and comfort? About $1.3 million for a Cessna Citation Excel with monthly maintenance fees of approximately $12,000 per month. The prices hit higher altitudes with other models NetJets sells, among them: the Raytheon Hawker 400XP, Dassault Falcon 2000, and Gulfstream 400 (GIV-SP) and V.   

The newest fad is the 25-hour prepaid card—and variants like the 50- or 100-hour card—that work like a debit card. They give you the right to so many hours of flying time, along with the service and safety of a fractionally owned jet—but without such a heavy financial commitment. The downside is that it’s like renting rather than investing—you simply pay for a flight. But it’s far quicker and easier to arrange than a part-owner deal.

BYPASSING AIRPORT CHAOS

Convenient, comfortable, secure and private, corporate jets operated by someone else—like NetJets and its passel of competitors such as Sentient, Flexjet and FlightOptions—are almost irresistible. They’re in fact becoming a must-have travel tool to get around faster (see sidebar, “The Pitch: Making the Case for Private Jets”)

One major reason: The brokers like NetJets serve as the flight departments for hundreds of Fortune 500 companies that don’t have the expertise to move planes around efficiently on today’s busy and global corporate landscape. Tracking the comings and goings of even a small fleet of planes is like running a private airline.      

It’s not just the upbeat economy that has turned a corporate jet from a discretionary buy into a necessary purchase. The business world is simply different since the shakeout in the travel industry from 2001 to 2003, coupled with the shock of 9/11, as dozens of airline, hotel and other travel executives have detailed at conferences and seminars. 

Companies that have to move executives and lesser employees around like toy soldiers playing war games now operate in a chaotic, sometimes dangerous environment. Among the challenges: exasperating security lines at airports, escalating traffic gridlock (especially at the approaches to airports), and the constant threats of terrorism. 

All these obstacles together have forced companies nationwide to reconsider the value of bypassing commercial airlines to get to appointments on time—and safely. Is that so new? Yes, say most corporate managers, when you add in the persistent 24/7 workaholic mentality, partly caused by the quarterly yardsticks of performance that Wall Street demands. Out there in the boonies, on a road trip, business travelers feel they must be more and more productive.

So, what could help the cause better than time saved by flying in a corporate jet, unimpeded by the commercial airport hassle?

After decades fielding accusations that corporate jets are just expensive pleasure craft, executives and managers on the road these days no longer have to apologize for booking private jets—ones their companies own, partly or entirely, and others their employers may charter.

THE ALLURE OF LUXURY

But some of the models are flying yachts, handsome to look at, polished inside, with every inch accounted for with curtains, carpets and accessories out of a Park Avenue or Beverly Hills decorator’s playbook.  And they lure clients from rock and sports stars to the unapologetic rich who shuttle from ski chalets in Aspen to townhouses in London.   

The excuse, if needed, is that the glamorous time-shares in the sky constitute only a tiny portion of the more than 10,000 business planes owned and operated by members of the National Business Aviation Association.

Even so, taking a peek at the private jet inventory these days is an eye-opening spectator sport.

• At the recent Paris Air Show, Bombardier’s new corporate jet—the super-luxurious Global 5000 with a $35-million price tag—was competing with Airbus’s gargantuan 800-passenger A380 for the attention of aircraft junkies and buyers.

• A few weeks later, at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, the airfield serving the golf tournament looked like a NetJets parking lot with the fractionally owned planes of CEOs and celebs conspicuously on display.

• What did a vacationer on Nantucket, the island of shingled mansions, see upon landing at its modest airport in August? Some 240 jets and turbojets that ferry executive and affluent travelers from all over the country to the classy New England getaway.

Today, in the new and improved jets available, you soar over the bottlenecks at nearly the speed of sound and get to your destination swiftly and in uncommon comfort. Posh seats, digital devices from DVDs to laptop ports, extras like champagne and caviar—finally someone is treating you the way you deserve.

THE BUFFETT HALO

The biggest private jet player, of course, is NetJets. The Woodbridge, New Jersey company accounts for some 70 percent of all business (in dollars) in the fractional ownership field. It began 2004 with a 28 percent increase in customers over 2003—with some 5,000 contracts in hand. And chairman and CEO Richard T. Santulli calls business this year “incredible.”  

Since forming NetJets in 1986, the former math professor and Goldman Sachs principal has put corporate and personal jetting on the global map (see sidebar, “Early Dreamers: How Air Taxis Got Started”). The company can ferry you to just about any place you want from Denver to Dubai—it has branches across Europe and the Middle East as well as the United States.

So successful has Santulli been in selling the NetJets basic formula of a one-eighth share of ownership that after three years as a customer, Warren E. Buffett, the highly respected Wall Street billionaire and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, bought the company in 1998. Recently the company added time cards to its flexible financing through a linkup with Marquis Jet Partners (866-JET-1400 or 212-499-3790), which sells blocks of hours on a particular plane for $110,000 to $300,000—and more. 

Today, NetJets has some 550 aircraft under its wing, twice what it had five years ago. Reflecting the varying needs of customers, the fleet runs the gamut from the seven-seat Cessna Citation Bravo to the 14-passenger Gulfstream 550. NetJets can also roll up a $40-million, 18-passenger Boeing Business Jet, basically a modified 737 with its interior configured for computing, dining and sleeping.

How does it differ from chartering a plane? In the fractional scenario you own an asset that qualifies for depreciation and tax benefits and may have value at the end of, say, a five-year program (see sidebar, “Dollars and Sense: Doing the Fractional Math”). And unlike most chartering you’re guaranteed to have a plane and crew available within four hours’ notice.

SHOPPING THE MARKET

Here’s a shopping guide to a trio of NetJets competitors—with some angles worth noting before you make your down payment:

Sentient: “Own the Private Jet Experience Without Owning the Private Jet.” That’s the pitch of Sentient Jet (800-760-4908), launched in 1999 with the backing of TH Lee Putnam Ventures, a private equity firm, and based in Norwell, Massachusetts. It has a lustrous board that includes former American Express chairman Harvey Golub and former FAA administrator Jane Garvey. It supervises a charter fleet of some 900 planes owned by corporations and high net-worth individuals. 

You open a membership account with a hefty deposit, choose what kind of jet you want, and specify your location and desired departure time. (You can cancel or change the flight up to 10 hours in advance.) The hourly one-way rate for a “select jet” ranges from $3,350 to $7,550 and from $4,050 to $10,000 for a “preferred jet.” There’s no time limit for using your membership funds. You can put additional users on your account. And you can cancel your membership without a penalty. 

Flexjet: In business since 1995, Flexjet is Canadian-based Bombardier’s Dallas outlet for the line of jets it produces, from LearJets to Challengers and Global Express models. Like all aerospace manufacturers, the company will happily sell you a plane, but it does offer both fractional ownership and time cards.

Currently, Flexjet (800-FLEXJET/353-9538) is promoting corporate jets every which way with the theme “One Size Does Not Fit All.” Owners, as the promo goes, can “fly different aircraft, use more than one aircraft per day, add hours or realize value from unused hours, and choose from a much broader range of share sizes.” In the fractional department, Flexjet starts with one-sixteenth shares and invites you to buy more in multiples of the basic fraction.

To boost business, the company is waiving “positioning fees” to Europe and Hawaii for its Challengers. (Normally, you pay for the time above six minutes of your scheduled departure time to get the aircraft to you.)  Flexjet is also plugging its “enhanced” Challenger 604, now outfitted with a new four-seat conference arrangement, along with amenities such as high-speed voice/data communications and DirecTV programming.

FlightOptions: What makes this Cleveland company really different is that it plays to the “used-jet share market.” It sells fractional interests largely in “formerly owned” aircraft. Its inventory is getting larger by the week as aircraft come off their five-year agreements or become available in the private-jet horse trading market. And many of its products such as Hawkers, Beechjets, Challengers and KingAirs come by way of Raytheon, which recently took a 49 percent interest in the company.

In any case, FlightOptions (216-261-3500) naturally makes the argument that its prices are up to 35 percent or more lower than those for new planes and the quality of its older planes is topnotch because of strict maintenance procedures. You can use the price advantage to move from a mid-size to a big jet, a FlightOptions marketing executive says, “flying in a Canadair Challenger 501 rather than a Beechjet or Citation Ultra.”

OUTRIGHT OWNERS

It may not make a dent in Delta’s dismal financial straits. But the third largest U.S. airline is the only major with a jet-charter subsidiary, Delta AirElite (800-927-0927). And it’s now in its 20th year of flying executives around by the hour or in 25-hour time-card increments through a hookup with Bombardier’s Flexjet. Its fleet includes Cessnas, Learjets, Gulfstreams and Challengers.

When you head for a fiscally tolerable landing in the search for what suits your needs, you may run into CitationShares (877-832-8678), jointly owned by Textron’s Cessna and TAG Aviation, one of the world’s premier aircraft management and operations companies (with offices worldwide). Cessna claims that more companies and individuals fly Citations—the CJ1, Bravo and Excel—than any other light or mid-size model. And with only four years in the private-jet arena, the company says it has about 400 time-sharing customers.

One of its proudest products is the Excel, the only business jet arguably offering the cabin comfort of a mid-size jet but with the flexibility and economy of a light jet. (Pioneer jet designer Bill Lear once said of his slightly cramped Learjet, "You can’t stand up in a Cadillac, either.”) 

If you want to buy or lease—no fractional hanky-panky—the Cessna playing field featuring light and mid-size aircraft is within pocketbook range of budget-minded buyers—and also those who compare the capital investment in a one-eighth share with the up-front full price of a jet. The company’s least expensive jet is the CJ1 price tag—at $4.3 million a pop.

But on the way, after a maiden flight in Wichita last April, is a lower-priced option, the Citation Mustang, which goes for $2.4 million with first deliveries late next year. That should make some of the reported 14,000 or so owners of twin-engine turboprops happy if they want to trade up to a jet without breaking the bank—but shy away from the CJ1.

ON A SIDENOTE...EARLY DREAMS: HOW AIR TAXIS GOT STARTED

Jetting around the nation in a plane you can call your own is a dream that caught the fancy of pioneers like Air Force General Curtis LeMay, radio celeb Arthur Godfrey, movie start Jimmy Stewart, and Bill Lear, inventor of LearJet, some 50 years ago.
 
In the 1960s and 1970s the first customers were corporate executives in a hurry. They could fly in a jumbo jet. But why use a truck for a job a limousine could do better?

That was the concept driving Executive Jet Aviation, a groundbreaking company created by General O.F. Lassiter. He took the Air Force’s seasoned system for handling “Special Missions” (trips in which generals and dignitaries were moved around) and adapted it to fit the needs of corporate executives. 

With suitable planes spread all over the map, the trick was to shift them around efficiently and make them interchangeable, even though they included many different models. EJA’s logistical goal for corporate clients was to pick you up within a few hours of your call and deliver you to almost anywhere. With skilled aircraft management it could be done.

The service was attractive for both companies taxiing executives around and individuals flying off to vacation retreats. And in the process of catering to corporate executives, EJA made tabloid headlines when it was discovered that some top brass were using the planes to disappear to romantic hideaways and fly companions around. It raised the whole issue of misuse of expensive corporate jets.        

In 1986 NetJets was born out of Executive Jet with the goal of airlifting Palm Beachers accustomed to white-gloves travel and hurry-up executives driven by tight appointment schedules to wherever they wanted to go. With the advent of long-range corporate jets, it wasn’t long before the company was following its multinational clients overseas—to the business capitals of Europe and oil sites in the Middle East. Today, nearly 20 years after NetJets’s founding, the destination might be Bahrain just as much as Boise.

Not lost on NetJets clientele is the glamour of flying in a nifty jet at a time of your choice—no departure schedule to fret over—and to and from smaller airports far from the madding crowd of ordinary commercial travelers.  

The newest development is the company’s linkup with Lufthansa to provide transportation for business travelers to and from hundreds of cities, towns and outlying factories in the European community. If you fly first or business class to the German airline’s Munich hub, you’ll be chauffeur-driven to a connecting NetJets flight to your intended address, whether it’s Eindhoven in the Netherlands or Montecatini in Italy.

This year NetJets will operate more than 250,000 flights to some 140 countries, using mostly Gulfstream IV-SPs and Gulfstream V aircraft.  With jet fuel prices over the top, will clients tolerate the heavy surcharges those long-distance dashes entail? The frequently heard kind of comment—“What’s another $500?”—may not ring quite true.