Some bright spark with more money than sense has just dropped $300 million
on an Airbus A380 superjumbo jet – for
his personal use. That works out at about $30,000 per square foot of cabin
space, before paying for fuel, pilots, refits, or anything else.
If you don’t care about destroying the planet, then private jets are certainly
a great way to fly: they’re vastly more comfortable and convenient than flying
commercial. For one thing, you never need to worry about being at the mercy
of major airlines’ hub-and-spoke systems: you can fly from wherever you are
to wherever you’re going, without changing planes.
Unless you own an A380, of course. The superjumbo is so enormous that it can
only land at a very limited number of airports, and I’m quite sure that none
of them are in rich-peoples’ playgrounds such as Aspen, Nantucket, or Bermuda.
Which means that our A380 owner, who I’m sure won’t stay anonymous for long,
is going to have to downsize to a smaller private jet any time he wants to fly
somewhere without a major metropolitan airport.