It is known that billionaires have allowed almost all imaginable luxuries: Picassos. Diamonds Private first -line pop stars. Superyates with cinemas, spas and submarines. Travel to space.
As there is almost nothing that a fortune of three commas cannot buy, billionaires are usually accustomed to possessing the best of the best, of everything they want. But Forbes I wanted to know what whim they consider absolutely essential. Therefore, this winter, we survey many billionaires in the world about the only luxury they cannot do without, and 40 of them responded.
The most common answer, by far, was a private jet, chosen by a dozen respondents. Then, three mentioned their phones. A couple of mentions went to luxury cars, second residences and, yes, in the air conditioning. And two mentioned their wives: “LIZ for 57 years!” Charles Koch wrote (estimated net worth: 67.5 billion dollars), president of Koch, Inc. Stephen Smith (6,000 million dollars), founder of First National Financial of Canada, said the Heliesquí. An anonymous respondent rightly wrote “privacy.”
Although 12 is a small sample, hundreds of other billionaires have private jets. So why do they give so much importance to their planes? In most cases, it’s about saving time. The process of traveling to a commercial airport, going through security control, embarking and shooting usually takes several hours, even without delays. A private jet, on the other hand, can be ready in minutes. These passengers can not only arrive and leave, but also have many more options to take off and land. Texas, for example, has 389 airports for public use, according to its transport department. Only 25 of them (six percent) are commercial airports.
“We have a lot of locations and it would be impossible to reach them without a private plane,” says billionaire David Hoffmann, who invests in dozens of business, from luxury transport to real estate. Hoffmann is based in Naples, Florida, but has branches throughout the country, in places like San Diego, Minneapolis, Seattle and St. Louis.
Samir Mane, entrepreneur of the retail and real estate sector, agrees: “I bought an airplane because we do not have good air connections with many of the countries where we operate.” Mane, the first billionaire of Albania, resides in Tirana. Visiting your stores in Sarajevo has been on a private plane for 20 minutes, he says, but it would take a whole day if I flew by commercial plane. “If I were in London, Frankfurt or Vienna, I would not need a plane, since air connections from those cities are excellent.”
“Many of these companies would have difficulty operating if their executives did not have to attend and leave meetings throughout the country the same day,” explains Hugh Chatham, vice president of sales of the CFS Jet Travel Agency. Or, as the real estate investor Larry Connor said in his response to the survey: “It is not a luxury, it is a business tool.”
Four billionaires wrote that their private plane was the most expensive article they had bought in an independent survey. Airplanes tend to depreciate between 5% and 10% every year, says Chatham, but most prices in the second-hand market doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic and have been highly remained since then. Now, used airplanes can cost only one million dollars for a small and basic aircraft, or up to 75 million dollars for a high -end, such as Bombardier’s global 7500; New aircraft can cost up to about 80 million dollars for a business jet, although some billionaires have bought larger commercial airplanes.
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The only luxury without which these billionaires say they can’t live
The standard global 7500 is a long -range plane that can make non -scales flights around the world and includes a four -zone cabin, which means that passengers have separate spaces to work, eat, sleep and rest. The billionaire brothers Lorenzo and Frank Feritta have one, which they bought in 2020 and now worth 55 million dollars each, according to Chatham estimates.
Among the billionaires who have bought complete commercial planes are Russian oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, whose airplanes have been immobilized and sanctioned by the US government since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Abramovich bought his Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in 2018 (the same type of plane that crashed in India earlier this week). Forbes Russia He estimated that it cost at least 350 million dollars, including improvements for its 50 passenger configuration. Usmanov bought its Airbus A340-300 in 2012 for between 350 and 500 million dollars, according to the United States Department of the Treasury. Both are among the largest private aircraft in Russia.
But while some billionaires splurge money in ultra sophisticated crafts, many choose simpler options.
“There is a certain stigma around having a private jet, and I think people do not realize that, in many cases, it is not as luxurious as it is believed,” says Chatham. “In general, these guys put people in a small plane where they have to be uncomfortable for two or two and a half hours. And that is because they save time and money to their company.”
There is also a growing concern for tracking: the rise of flight tracking applications such as FlightTAware has allowed anyone on the Internet to see where and when an plane flies, which many billionaires consider a violation of their privacy. Some hide their property by creating several limited liability companies (LLC).
If the billionaires do not want airplanes only for them, or do not want to disburse large amounts of money to store, maintain and provide their own airplanes with personnel, another option is the fractional property, which implies buying a part of a plane and accessing it during a proportional number of hours per year. Hoffmann affirms that he and his company use both the total and fractional property: “Our flight demand is this high.” There are also subscription models, where customers buy access to a fleet for a month or a year.
Alternatives like these can work so well that MANE resorted to them just two weeks ago. Originally, he had bought a Citation XLS+ used in 2021 for 10.8 million dollars, his most expensive purchase.
“I sold it last week for 11.8 million dollars,” he said last Thursday. But he still can’t live without private flights: “Now I use view and netjets.”
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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