Private Jets Coach Prices

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Which of the following too-good-to-be-true deals really is too good to be true:

a) $1 one-way fares between Honolulu and Maui
b) $99 one-way fares between New York and Los Angeles
c) $999 business-class round-trips from New York to Paris or London
d) Corporate jet flights for the price of commercial coach

If you guessed a, b, or c, you’re wrong. We’ve seen all of those fares this year thanks to the Byzantine pricing and promotional regimens of the world’s scheduled commercial airlines.

Which means that the answer is d, right? Well, maybe.

Conventional wisdom and basic math indicate that private jet flights at the price of commercial coach aren’t possible. Everybody I know who knows about this stuff says that small private jets cost roughly $3,000 an hour to operate. So, anyone who wants to fly corporate must be prepared to part with as much as ten times the price of a first-class ticket.

But I’m hedging, because a startup company called Jumpjet insists that it can bring corporate jets to the masses at coach-level prices.

So far, Jumpjet has been met with a ton of demand, but hasn’t impressed the world with its business model. It launched and crashed within a matter of days earlier this month. And while its founder and chief executive, Will Ashcroft, promises that Jumpjet will be back in the air as early as midsummer, he refuses to explain how his company will make money offering entry-level customers two round-trip private jet flights a month for just $2,000. When pressed for details, he refers to his financial calculations as “secret sauce.”

By now we’re all familiar with fractional-ownership schemes, “jet cards” that allow you to buy a predetermined number of flying hours, and even online auctions of seats on deadheading corporate jets. No matter how the market is sliced and diced, however, no entrepreneur has gotten the price of flying private anywhere near the price of a first-class seat, let alone the price of coach. At least until Ashcroft came along in March.

As laid out on Jumpjet’s website, their pricing goes something like this: Silver Level members pay $2,000 a month for two round-trip flights on a network of private and corporate jets, each leg of which can be as long as 1,800 miles. Travelers must sign up for a one-year term and agree to make flight reservations at least 14 days in advance. There are also restrictions on reservation changes and members understand that they may have company on the flight. There is a $500 sign-up fee, but no hidden costs. And there is one stupendous perk: Members can bring along as many as three guests per flight at no extra charge.

That means that the effective cost of a Boston-Minneapolis round-trip using Jumpjet is $1,000 if you travel alone, or just $250 a seat if you bring along three colleagues. Compare that to the $1,460 Northwest Airlines just quoted me for a midweek coach round-trip between Boston and Minneapolis purchased 14 days in advance.

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