No longer so much an elitist toy but an effective way of getting from A to B… BUSINESS days that make a mockery of scheduled air travel by comprising two hours of meetings, four hours flying and seven hours killing time at airport terminals may sound far-fetched. Yet they are a grim reality for too many people. If a businessman is charged out to clients at, say, £400 an hour, he almost can’t afford to use public air transport because of the bottlenecks at airports. Check-in facilities and all the security palaver are the biggest hindrances, and they have made a huge impact.
Paul Mulligan, chairman of Southend-based 247jet, realised this would cause business people, celebrities and other well-heeled travellers to drift away from scheduled airlines – they don’t want the hassle and they don’t have the time. His approach is to work his aircraft efficiently to keep the price down. So his two Cessna Citation 2 eight-seaters have three crews each, and are aloft 1,200-1,400 hours a year, compared with 600-700 hours for most corporate owners or 4,000 hours for one of BA’s Boeings. A new Citation 2 costs $7 million – and comes with a large bundle of depreciation. Mulligan prefers to pay $2.5 million for one that has flown 200-300 hours a year, and then spend $300,000 on fresh engines and refurbishment. He will add another pair of Citation 2s to the fleet this year, and a trans-Atlantic Falcon 2 in 2008.
He finds himself in a rising market: “Fractional owners are migrating to us, and one of them told me you’re twice as good at less than half the price of a shared ownership programme. So we’re giving people what they want at a price they can afford – not an elitist toy but a simple, cost-effective means of getting from A to B.” For example, 247jet can take eight people on a weekend jaunt to Nice or Cannes for £5,300. “There’s no safer way of flying than in a public service private jet – just look at the statistics,” says Mulligan. “With us you just drive up to the plane and go – none of this nonsense about tubes of toothpaste or bottles water. We’re deadline driven, and we put the fun back into flying.” l 411 words Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Howard: editor, Mediaplanet private aviation supplement with The Times (16 tabloid pages) |