Private Jet Companies Attempt To Justify Their Existence

April 24, 2009 at 12:11 PM | by egw | Comment (1)

Sweet ride! Advertising blog Copyranter just posted a gallery of private-jet advertisements pulled from a recent issue of Forbes. How dare they flaunt their wares in this climate? They don't deserve to advertise.

But seriously, it's funny how the ads attempt to appeal to current concerns about the economy while at the same time selling a product far out of the range of most travelers.

Dassault Falcon stresses the efficiency of its planes; FlexJet urges buyers to make a "true assessment" of the costs involved in traveling commercial (including driving and terminal time), asserting that a private jet does not say to observers, "I'm a well-heeled jet-setter who spends money frivolously." One might think they would have done better not to enter that line into their copy.

And Beechcraft even mentions the most famous recent private-jet-takers, the auto-company CEOs who took the flight of shame to Washington D.C. in December.

But our favorite has got to be Cessna's, which appeals to the ego by inferring that owning a private jet can make you stronger and more threatening to competitors (the peacock defense?).

Instead of selling your private jet like one-sixth of the U.K.'s owners, or simply using it less like Apple CEO Steve Jobs you should buy more and use them twice as much -- just to make people mad! Or to get more value out of your purchase, if you're Business Jet Traveler editor Stephen Pope, who argued that beyond 250 hours, owning all or part of your own plane is cheaper than you'd think.

Still, this "Team America"-style cheerleading is at least affecting one person: French prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy just dropped �176 million ($232 mill in USD) out of the French Air Force budget for an Airbus A330-200 that will be refitted with desks and overall seating for 60 passengers. In deference to the global downturn, though, he bought his used from Caribbean airline Air Caraibes, despite reports saying that Sarko really wanted a new one. These are difficult times.

Related Stories:
· Private Jet Advertising Round-Up [Copyranter via The Awl]
· Private Jet Travel: Michael Phelps Shills for CitationShare [Jaunted]
· Business Life Without the Corporate Jet [Times Online]
· Steve Jobs Spends Less Time On His Private Jet [WSJ Digits Blog]
· Nicolas Sarkozy's New Plane [Luxist]
· In Defense Of Your Own Plane [SmartMoney.com]

[Ad scan: Copyranter]

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