Quote:
Originally Posted by Beyond Limits
Not that I am about to defend any of the more questionable decisions made by any of the Big 3 I think the idea of a corporate jet is really lost on a lot of people. Corporations do not purchase and/or lease jets for the sake of luxury travel on the part of their executive management. They truly are business tools. They allow rapid travel to meetings, provide a moving office to prepare for meetings and other dealings while in transit, and perhaps more importantly they allow for on demand travel. In business you truly cannot replace the value of a face to face meeting. It is hard to understand until you have been in that type of situation where that kind of travel is necessary. It really is more about the ability to conduct business face to face then it is anything else.
There is also the fact that as an executive of a large company there are many days they have to go to meetings in multiple parts of the country all on the same day. It simply is not possible to accomplish that by using commercial air travel. (For example to fly from Burbank to Sacramento takes nearly three hours by the time you are done with security and everything else. If you take a private jet from Van Nuys (a large airport for private jets approx 15 minutes from Burbank) to Sacramento you can fly there, have an hour long meeting and fly back in the same amount of time it takes just to get there on a commercial flight. I mean there is a reason that we have an entire airlift command dedicated to executive air travel for the US Government.
And the other reality is that even though a new business jet may cost $20 Million for example over the course of the life of the jet it really only costs the corporation a few hundred thousand a year since the majority of the cost of the plane and operating expense is a tax write off any how.
And for anyone who doubts me I challenge you to find one Fortune 500 company that does not either own a corporate jet(s) or has an in place and active agreement with a leasing firm for on demand corporate jets.
Just my $.02...
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This is the same thing I've been saying to people since this shenanigans began. The problem is that Average Joe hears private jet and his mind automatically turns to thoughts of opulence and corporate frivolity. Now, it would have been nice for the Big 3 to have the foresight to see the PR fiasco that flying in to ask for tax-payer moneyon their 'sky yachts' would be, but seriously can you blame them? Traveling on private jets is business as usual and something that is often mandated by their boards not just for efficiency but for security purposes also.
Now we have $.04
