The celebrities who espouse a green lifestyle often find themselves in trouble when they indulge in some of the privileges of the wealthy. Al Gore has taken the heat for his energy consumption and now Sting is in the spotlight for a private jet splurge. Sting took a solo flight to Germany recently on a Falcon 2000 to meet the rest of the band, The Police for a concert in Leipzig. A spokesperson for the airport confirmed that he was the solo passenger on the plane which can carry 14 passengers. He flew back to England less than 24 hours later via private jet but it's not known if he was alone. According to the Daily Mail, the Police was named 'dirtiest band' in January for the scale of their carbon footprint. It's been a tough year for Sting and his eco-actions. He started off the year by renting a private yacht in Australia and as I mentioned back in May, his Rainforest Foundation has come under fire for its record of giving. Sting also starred in an ad-campaign for the notso eco Jaguar cars.
The Sunday Times reports that the Queen of England is in the market for a new plane. No Air-Force-One-sized jet for the Queen though, word from Buckingham Palace is that they are in the market for a small executive plane like a Gulfstream or Learjet. The plane would also be available for use by Gordon Brown and senior ministers.
The plane w ould be paid for by taxpayers and would include the usual private plane bells and whistles such as catering facilities and in-flight entertainment. The Queen had previously been able to use larger planes provided by the RAF. Also in the past, Prince Charles and other royals have chartered planes or flown first class for their royal tours, which they will still have to do for longer trips. The new plane will be best for short jaunts. The prime minister opted against a larger plane for himself and the royals because of the price. A decision on the type of plan and specific purchase details probably won't be available until later this year.
What's particularly interesting about the comments section of the article is that many of those who wrote in believe the Queen (and to some extent Gordon Brown) should have a bigger plane.
Air taxi service Linear Air has announced the launch of its Eclipse E500 flight service in the greater New York City area. The company's aircraft are based at the White Plains/Westchester County Airport in New York, but will be servicing major and regional airports throughout the tri-state region as well as the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Linear Air serves 10 times more airports than the traditional commercial airlines serve. The Eclipse 500 is a very light jet which only holds a few passengers so to take your whole entourage to Cape Cod for the weekend you'll need to opt for their eight-passenger Cessna Grand Caravan turboprop. . In order to price out an book flights you need to become a member of Linear Air's service.
For the big purchases in life sometimes it's easier to share the burden. In the escalating real estate market, many people opted to go in on houses together. Now there is a new service helping potential plane owners defray the high cost of aircraft ownership by partnering up. The Aircraft Partnership Association is a new website designed to make sharing aircraft ownership easier.
The site not only helps people find potential partners but also helps them work out the details such as financing, insurance and legal and tax issues. The Aircraft Partnership Association also has goods and services supplier members who help about the partner members. The site will also help with ooperating the partnership, providing online management services for scheduling flights and maintenance and bookkeeping.
Annual membership dues will be $29 but during the initial building phase they've chopped that down to $9.99.
Wealthy socialites in London love to party just as much as those here in the U.S., but now it seems they've found a way to step things up by getting around that pesky "closing time" obstacle: they hop into a private jet and fly to a different time zone. What makes this interesting is that they aren't hopping into their own personal private jets, they're "jet-pooling" in planes operated by The Private Jet Club that are coordinated through Whisky Mist, a new club at Hilton's Zeta bar.
Even if they're continuing to party on the planes I can hardly imagine still being up for more by the time the plane lands in New York or Rio (the most popular destinations), but then I'm not a wealthy socialite with nothing else to do but fly around the world looking for a good time!
Getting your own plane is a pretty fantastic purchase but what if you could have one for only $139,000. The Icon A5 is a two-seater sport plane that is an amphibious, retractable and fold-able aircraft with the ability to be towed on a trailer behind your car! It even comes with a plane-sized parachute to help ease the landing in an emergency situation. Small enough for a pair to fly and compact enough to keep in an oversized driveway, the Icon A5 will be a welcome creation come 2010 when its available.
Looks like those reports of Silverjet's resurgence were a false alarm. The Telegraph spoke with chief executive Lawrence Hunt who said the business-class-only airline is permanently grounded. There had been hopes that the company Kingplace would be able to bail out Silverjet but they were not able to raise sufficient cash to meet the capital requirements from the Civil Aviation Authority. After that we heard that Middle East carrier Arabjet might take over but Hunt calls them "timewasters" who were not even able to " raise the £125,000 needed to secure negotiations with the administrators." It looks like Silverjet will not be sold off as a going concern but will likely be dismantled with the assets sold off piece by piece.
Japan Airlines (JAL) has created a new suite for JAL first class and a new seat for their business class which they will be introducing on US routes. The airline will launch the JAL Suite in first class and the JAL Shell Flat Neo Seat in business class when the airline introduces new 777-300ER aircraft on US routes, starting with the Tokyo - New York route on August 1, 2008.
The suitse in JAL First Class are 20% more spacious than the airline's current seat in first class and only suites are available in the JAL First Class cabin set in a 1-2-1 configuration. The suite includes a seat upholstered in gray leather which converts into a full-flat bed. In the 180° position the seat combines with an ottoman located at the opposite end of the compartment to create one of the largest and widest, most comfortable sleeping areas in first class. When the seat is in the upright position, the ottoman can be used as a seat for a guest. The sliding table can be placed between the seat and ottoman. Passengers, seated in the pair of suites who are traveling together can lower privacy partitions located between them. Each suite comes with Bose noise-cancelling headphones and a personal 19-inch personal TV screen and stowage spaces for bags and small items and a laptop power point. Those in the suites can also whatever they like off the menu whenever they would like with choices of Japanese or Western full-course menus. For sleeping a cabin attendant can place a Tempur-Pedic mattress on the seat bed along with a down comforter and a pillow a well as offer special JAL loungewear.
The new business class seat reclines to 171 degrees and has a 15.4 inch personal TV screen. The business class cabin also features the "Sky Gallery," one wall of the cabin shows a a photographic exhibition that will be regularly changed over the year. The first exhibit, in collaboration with Fuji Film, will be a series of photographs of forests in Japan entitled 'Forest Forever'. The gallery will be located directly opposite a self-service bar counter, where passengers can enjoy snacks and beverages at anytime.
A spot of bad news for the Eclipse 500. The FAA has recommended inspection of the throttles on the small jets after one made an emergency landing in Chicago last week. The National Transportation Safety Board has said that there is the need for an emergency procedure for dual engine control failure. So far around 200 of the popular private jets have been delivered. The one that landed in Chicago had only 238 flight hours. The Eclipse 500 is the basis of a number of fledgling airtaxi services so this first hint of trouble has been received with some amount of worry by industry watchers.
Talk about bizarre, Lamborghini recently enlisted the help of the Italian military (don't they have anything better to do?) to fly one of their rare and uber-expensive Lamborghini Reventon cars over the town of Turin and land it on the roof of the Lingotto building, where they were having a conference titled "Lamborghini and speed, a project in record time." And record money too I bet.
The only explanation Lamborghini gave to curious onlookers was "all 20 units (of the Reventon) have been sold worldwide." I guess that since they were each priced at over $1.5 million that is a big deal, but who came up with this idea?
We thought they were out when they shut down in May but business-class-only airline, Silverjet might be back in the skies soon. Kingplace, an Irish off-the-shelf company backed by Geneva-based Heritage Cie, has inked a deal with Silverjet's administrators, Begbies Traynor. Silverjet plans to relaunch flights to New York and Dubai from London as soon as possible. The company plans to take on all of the existing staff, honor Silverjet's existing customers' tickets and put planes back in service in a few weeks.
Premiere jet charter broker Halcyon is arranging luxury helicopter packages between New York City and the Hamptons this season via the purchase of a special flight club card. The trip, which can take up to four hours on the Long Island Expressway in typical summer traffic, is a mere 45 minutes by helicopter. The Halcyon coordinated flights offer high-speed premium helicopters with luxurious cabins -- Bell Jet Ranger, Long Ranger, Augusta or Eurocopter -- staffed with two pilots, and can accommodate up to four passengers. Their Southampton Flight Club Card costs $7,700 (plus fees) and includes two one-way transfers from NYC to East Hampton or vice versa. The East Hampton Flight Club Card costs $22,500 (plus fees) and includes six one-way transfers. With the purchase of a card you also get a bottle of champagne, a carton of strawberries and a Halcyon Jets' gift basket containing Keihl's sunscreen, Origins organic lip balm, a Ralph Lauren beach towel and a bottle of Evian Mineral Water Spray, so you're ready to hit the beach the moment you arrive.
Given that we've seen several small business-class-only outfits close up shop recently and one of the biggest U.S. air taxis also scaled back, it seems like madness to create Europe's first air taxi service right now. But Forbes reports that Peter Leiman and Cameron Ogden, two Harvard Business School graduates are launching the new private jet taxi service, Blink, on June 12. Blink's current flight plans take you through much of Western Europe and the the tickets are up to 25% more expensive than regular business-class travel for seats on their four-seater Cessna Citation Mustang. Blink is off to a healthy start, they've ordered 45 of Cessna jets and have received$30 million in investment which sounds like a lot but unfortunately a fledgling airline business dealing with today's fuel prices could go through that money pretty fast. Here's hoping the name Blink doesn't refer to how long they'll stay in business.
Flying used to be a fun (or at the very least tolerable) but nowadays it's turned into an outright chore. Lines are long, seats are cramped, there are extra fees for absolutely everything, and forget getting served anything to eat (you're lucky if you get water and a few pretzels). That might be the case for most of us but it's not the case for everybody! There are some airlines (usually those flying overseas) that offer luxuries like champagne, caviar, private cabins, and lie-flat beds. Here's the list of the most luxurious airlines in the world:
In a move that surprises no one given the recent shuttering of business-class-only jet services MaxJet Airways and Eos Airlines,Silverjet, the last of the three, has folded. The London-based company failed to get a necessary $5 million in emergency funding to continue operations. The rise in the price of jet fuel doomed the business which was never profitable in its 16-month run. Lawrence Hunt, the chief executive of Silverjet, says on the Silverjet website that it might not be over yet, if he is able to get new investors with deep pockets the company will start up again. Unfortunately given the track record of business-class-only airlines, which despite the obvious appeal, seemed doomed to failure, he will have a tough road ahead.
The celebrities who espouse a green lifestyle often find themselves in trouble when they indulge in some of the privileges of the wealthy. Al Gore has taken the heat for his energy consumption and now Sting is in the spotlight for a private jet splurge. Sting took a solo flight to Germany recently on a Falcon 2000 to meet the rest of the band, The Police for a concert in Leipzig. A spokesperson for the airport confirmed that he was the solo passenger on the plane which can carry 14 passengers. He flew back to England less than 24 hours later via private jet but it's not known if he was alone.
