Future Trends for Flying Private

This week, Business Jet Traveler unveiled a survey of business jet travellers, to try and determine the future trends of flying private. And that future looks bright.

The 1,000 respondents gave answers that are quite enlightening for the business jet industry and I thought we should look at some of them in detail.

Why Fly Private?

Good question!

BJT asked the respondents to give three reasons why they fly private, and most selected "Save Time" as their #1 reason. Coming in second was "Ability to use airports that airlines don't serve" and third was "Ability to work and hold business meetings en route". Other possible selections included "More comfortable flight",  "Privacy" and "Security". It's certainly true that flying point-to-point saves an incredible amount of time, without the flight delays, cancellations and long check-in and security lines that are encountered when flying commercial.

Flight Paths

When asked about their expectations for flying in the year ahead, 51.8% said they expected to fly the same as they do now. But a whopping 39.9% said they would be flying either a bit more, or a lot more in the year ahead. And that's good news.

Costs

Perhaps the most interesting question that was asked was ranking the three most important aircraft features. It's clear that costs are high on everyone's list, as "Economical Operation" was their number one response. Second was "Range" and third was "Cabin size". Other choices included baggage space, cabin amenities, product support history, aircraft model's accident history, runway performance, cockpit technology, speed, age of aircraft and aircraft manufacturer.

Download

 The entire report, which includes interesting insights on fractional ownership, jet cards, operators and manufacturers, is available on the BJT site here.