If multi million $$$ contracts are involved and ESPECIALLY if 2 or more people are flying, then private @ $5-$10K an hour can be well worth it.
Time is money.
Time checking in.
Time going through TSA
Time waiting to board
Time boarding
Time waiting for flight delays
Time in flight
Time landing and deplaning
Time waiting for your bag
Time getting to and from a busy airport.
For a time conscious exec., on a commercial plane that is mostly all useless down time.
On a private jet, they can fly into a smaller, less congested and closer airport. Park the car, or get dropped off and 5-10 minutes later, be wheels up.
While on the plane, if co workers are with, details can be gone through or phone calls can be made (unable on commercial).
Plane lands goes right to its area and 5-10 minutes and you're in your ride, leaving the airport.
Flying ORD-LHR, first class, Depending on when you book, that flight might be $4480, a month from now, to $8643 within the next 2 weeks.
8 people could cost $68k flying commercial. $80k in a G450.
If the company owns its own jets and flies regularly, it's much, much less expensive. $3k an hour for fuel. 8 hour flight = $24k in fuel, plus airport taxes and fees for landing.
At a certain level you are right. If I had a company and it required reimbursed international travel built into the contract I would DEFINITELY look into fractional ownership.
Also if I had a company that required key executives to go
somewhere together and I didn’t have a company plane, as in your example, chartering makes more $$ sense.
But for 99.99% of people, that really isn’t an option. The article is just an advertisement for chartering or fractional ownership and I have seen similar ads that were actually flagged as ads.
Up until about a year ago I flew weekly for the prior 15 years. My annual flight expenditures were around $30K — not near enough for this option.