Private planes and jets used to be for billionaires and celebrities, imagining that the skies were filled with Louis Vuitton trunks and plenty of businessmen setting their own agendas or reviewing their appointments. However, in the last few years things have changed and a whole new market has opened up, where tech is leading the charge.
Unsurprisingly, you can go on your smartphones and some minutes later hop on a charter flight for a fraction of the price it would be to take the whole plane with Uber pool and see what’s available to your chosen destination. On-demand businesses operating in the sharing economy have a vital role to play in helping people make their lives more efficient within a congested environment where time delays happen regularly. Victor was the first company to disclose aircraft and crew specifics, side-by-side comparisons of thousands of jets at 40,000 airports worldwide and instant estimate pricing. Victor comes a sales growth of 139 percent. Apparently flexibility, cost effectiveness and time efficiency in travel are the buzzwords for a 21st century life.
Moreover, in the last five years many other apps have launched (and shuttered) presenting similar offerings, such as JetSuite, Surf Air, or SkyJet; some are even trying subscription-based models. The need, obviously, just seems to be growing because security lanes becoming longer, airports becoming more unmanageable, and the constant headache delays that have become part of flying. This has become nightmares for passengers, too.
Purchasing a state of the art business jet is a sure-fire way to cement your status among the world’s wealthy elite. Many companies use private jets despite the hefty costs involved in obtaining and operating them, as they are known to boost profitability. Interestingly, 63 percent of business jets around the world are registered in the United States, some 12,000 aircraft in total. Brazil has the second largest number of private jets registered, 764, according to Corporate Jet Investor and Forbes.
Among the world’s super-rich, yachts and sports cars of the most sought-after status symbols. However, nothing says “welcome to the big time” more than owning your very own private jet. Despite their high price tag (a Gulfstream 451 costs about $41 million), luxury jet registrations have been booming across the world. According to Knight Frank’s 2017 Wealth Report, Belarus had the highest growth rate in ownership with its pool of jets rising 1,300 percent. Despite that seemingly impressive growth there are only 13 jets registered in the Eastern European nation compared to just one in 2006.
In Asia, the trend is slanted towards the business traveler with the tiger economies of Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia sparking their huge manufacturing booms and attracting investors. In fact, the Chinese business aviation market is growing exponentially as the operators have increased almost fourfold over the past four years. In addition, report by Hurun Report, there are now 562 billionaires in China, and 500 new airports will be coming by 2020. A perfect storm, or rather, blue sky.
China added 215 jets to its list of registration over the past 10 years, equating to a 347 percent increase and a grand total of 277 aircraft. Those numbers may seem impressive but China and all other nations still have some serious catching up to do. The United States only increased its private jet registrations by a mere 34 percent since 2006 but it has a whopping 12,717 private jets registered to owners. Mexico comes second globally with 950 registrations while Brazil thrown off the top-three with 786.
