Inside the lavish world of private jets ... and how much it really costs to fly
From wild passenger requests, free flowing champagne, double beds, silver service and epic proposals, we go inside Queensland’s world of private jetsetting.
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From free flowing champagne, double beds and silver service dining to epic proposals, high-end catering for passenger’s pets and a $1m request to relocate a giraffe.
We go inside the extraordinary world of private jet setting revealing everything from wild passenger requests, costs, what really happens on board and why it’s more popular than ever.
Flightcharter.com.au’s team manager Cian Voets says the industry boomed during Covid and has been growing ever since.
“During Covid, we tripled our business and we’ve been able to maintain quite a healthy growth,” she says.
“Now we’re more like doubling our profits instead of tripling so still a huge increase in terms of what it was like. It’s extremely busy at the moment.”
It’s not just a way to travel for celebrities, says Voets, with the market mostly saturated by people travelling for either business or leisure.
The busiest domestic routes, she says, are often Sydney or Melbourne to the Gold Coast or for the higher end jets, Melbourne or Sydney to Hamilton Island.
It comes, of course, with a hefty price tag.
A flight from Brisbane to Melbourne on high end jet, the Falcon 7x, which seats 14 passengers, will set you back about $67,000.
A cheaper option is the eight-seater Phenom 300E with a one way flight from Sydney to Melbourne up to $13,700.
Be prepared to empty your savings though if you want to fly internationally to somewhere like London or Canada from Australia, which can set you back around half a million dollars.
Recently, Voets says they chartered a flight from Brisbane to Canada on a nine-seater Falcon 50 which cost close to $200,000.
“For a lot of people in that high end jet market, cost is often last of the important factors,” she says.
“More important for them is reliability, so making sure that they’re going with someone who is not going to have a cancellation last minute, is going to get them to their destination and it’s the whole customer service journey.”
It is the epitome of luxury travel and of course, there are the perks.
There’s no queues, delays or boarding passes with Voets saying passengers only need to arrive about 15 minutes before their flight and customs and passport checks are done in the charter’s lounge or on board.
When you’re on board, the service begins.
“They will usually have stocked the aircraft with things like Bollinger champagne, Moet … they will have particular kinds of beer, wine or champagne,” says Voets.
“Before the flight we’ll also be doing things like checking if there’s a particular type of champagne, drinks, catering that you would prefer.
“Sometimes it can be as broad as, ‘I’d really like sushi or Japanese food, or I really want Bollinger.’
With one cabin attendant, the large international jets, like the Falcon 7x, offers silver service dining with ovens, microwaves and hot meals on demand.
The sky is the limit for catering requests, says Voets, who shares one of the more specific passenger demands she’s received.
“A client wanted specific Atlantic shelled prawns for his cat when we were flying,” she says.
“He cared more about the quality of the food his cat was having.”
She’s even had a request for McDonald’s.
“That one was really funny … we can do whatever you want, we can make it happen, if you would like that, we are more than happy.”
Often it’s for a milestone birthday, an epic proposal, special occasion or a family holiday, but Voets says among the more surprising reasons people choose to fly via private jet is for pet and animal relocation – including zoo animals.
“We’ve had some interesting things and inquiries about transporting monkeys to the US, a giraffe to the UK and a tiger to Tasmania,” she says.
The giraffe was the most elaborate.
“We were having to look at something like a Boeing 737, a 200 person aircraft just for the one giraffe,” she says.
“That was going to be close to a million dollars. It didn’t eventuate, but who knows, maybe someone got the job in the end.”
They did, however, organise to fly the tiger from Sydney to Tasmania which cost up to $30,000.
“The tiger was challenging because they have a special cage that’s made specifically to fit them, it was so large, that was a challenge,” she says.
“We could only use two particular kinds of aircraft to move them in because we need an aircraft with a really large cargo door so we can manoeuvre the crate in.
“Then there were some complexities of obviously having a zookeeper there that was trained to be with them.”
But it’s still not the most unusual she jokes with her ‘funniest’ during Covid. A passenger transported her pets across the country.
“There was a sweet old lady that was relocating from the Blue Mountains to the Gold Coast and she had a fish tank full of fish,” she says.
“She also had three cats, budgies and a dog (on board). We had to empty the fish tank and have the fish in little bags.”
This is all just a glimpse of what goes on among the clouds as more people choose to live the high life.
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