The wealthy have always been privy to some of life’s luxuries, and private travel is just one of them. Chartering a whole jet doesn’t seem like a massive deal for the elite members of society, at least financially.
For obvious reasons, private jets offer comfort in style throughout the whole flight. There are no more queueing at the airports and no more strict security checks – those are two problems with flying commercial. Aside from this, the ultra-wealthy passengers can reach their destinations with less hassle. Best of all, you can choose to take off and land at the nearest possible airport, that’s if you want to save time on your trip.
The Private Jet Charter Business
The private aviation industry boasts a unique flying experience at a higher cost. Unfortunately, this isn’t available to many. If you belong to the limited proportion of the population, who can afford such a grand privilege, then good for you.
The reality is, commercial flying is way more famous for its practical approach to passengers. It also has its environmental reasons as well. So when the pandemic struck the planet, and the rich had to take on flying to the most exclusive experience, that’s when opinions were voiced.
The environmental impact of the private jet flying
For a fact, private jets hold the higher ground for the typical flyer for numerous reasons, so long as one can pay for it. Yet, over the last few months, the rich have taken criticism for making use of the private jet charter business more often than needed. This travel pattern has gone on for decades now, and climate-conscious individuals call them out for this hypocritical behavior.
In the environmental aspect, private flights have been deemed unhelpful. It can accommodate only minimal passengers as opposed to commercial aviation. That would mean fewer people are carried per private flight if you do the math correctly.
Basically, greenhouse gases are produced on flights depending on the aircraft used. Some aircraft models are a bit more environmental-friendly than others. However, if you look at the bigger picture, it doesn’t matter much what airline you choose to the untrained eye. If you count the number of private flights needed to reach the maximum count on a commercial flight, that would probably equal 10 times as much.
For instance, a 3-hour private jet from point A to B. According to basic energy computations, the total emission produced would amount to around 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide. It’s too much to carry only a few people to a destination, don’t you think? For this reason, the private jet industry is bombarded with environmentalists’ complaints, and business travel has a lot to contribute to the issue.
Business travel via private jets
Seeing how much businesses value private jet travel, it should be worth checking out why they feel this way, and here are the facts. For one thing, jet travel promotes client retention and enhanced productivity since top-level executives can save much of their time. Any employee, for that matter, who’s flying private can appreciate this factor, as well as any third parties involved in the business transactions.
Productivity is not that far behind when it comes to private travel. You’d have privacy in the confines of the luxury jet, should you need to work on something while waiting for arrival. Lately, too, one crucial factor why private flying is becoming the trend is for safety purposes, owing to the pandemic.
However, in the last couple of years, private flying has caught the attention of many planet conservationists and environmentalists, albeit negatively. With too many businessmen using private jets, environmental damage is significantly emphasized.
The Uber of Private Jet Businesses
Private flying is causing a toll on the environment; that’s why businesses and moneyed travelers can no longer pretend ignorance to these complaints. Clearly, no one wants to be singled out as one who doesn’t advocate for environmental protection.
So with this realization to further prevent damage to mother earth, private charter businesses have established an uber-like personal jet sharing service. How does this work exactly? The scheme is similar to an Uber service, wherein passengers going to the same destination can ride together. This saves money since more people would be sharing the ride and the flight in the case of private jets.
Wheels Up
One company that has transitioned to the environmentally friendly uber-like service is Wheels Up. Its range of products available to interested passengers entices people to become members of their ridesharing program. By becoming a member of Wheels Up, the user has control of an app that sees offered flights to specific destinations, and more importantly, sees if there are still unused seats.
The ultimate goal here of Wheels Up is to expand the business to work for all parties concerned. The company hopes to maintain its climate-conscious image to the public. Even top executives would have nothing wrong to say about that.
During the pandemic’s peak, Wheels Up had unprecedented struggles accommodating the multitude of passengers who booked private flights to anywhere in the world. The influx was so high that the waiting period reached up to 3 months in advance. Hence, this move to Uber-like flight-sharing would be the first step to promoting a climate-friendly image.
NetJets
The company NetJets is not to be left behind in this scheme. However, it’s a bit different from that of Wheels Up. Its goal is to temporarily halt sales of timeshare jets to the elite class, seeing that these planes are used for unnecessarily solo travel.
For the existing fractional owners of private jets, things could be challenging, especially with the ridesharing program in the works. All in all, NetJets tries to uphold its passenger-friendly and environmentally-friendly image.
Conclusion
Ridesharing could very well be a thing of the near future, or possibly in the next few months. Plus, with the present circumstances pushing people to go for private jet travel, this could mean favorable news for everyone. In particular, the Uber-like services offered by a few airline companies reflect positively on their image and establish them as climate-friendly businesses.
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