Private jet makers woo Asia’s super rich
SINGAPORE: If you have money and want to flaunt it, mansions, limousines and yachts are no longer enough. For the super rich of Asia, owning a private jet has become the ultimate status symbol.
Executive-jet makers aiming to woo Asia’s growing ranks of billionaires and multi-millionaires were out in force at the Singapore Airshow, which drew to a close over the weekend.
Brazil’s Embraer had Jackie Chan’s personal Legacy 650 jet – with a unique white, red and yellow livery inspired by a mythical Chinese dragon– flown to Singapore for the trade fair.
The Hong Kong-born martial arts movie star, who has a massive following in China, was appointed this month as the company’s first ever brand ambassador.
Chan’s 13-seat plane, which has a list price of Us$31.5mil (Rm95.9mil), was one of several executive aircraft put on display by exhibitors including Canada’s Bombardier and Usbased Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.
“Asia-pacific, as you all know, is a market that is growing very, very nicely,” Embraer president Ernest Edwards, whose company also makes commercial planes, said. Asia now has the world’s second largest concentration of millionaires after the United States, with China and India producing them at a dizzying rate, according to a study by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini.
Jet makers are catering to the socalled “ultra high net worth” individuals and families with investable assets of at least Us$30mil (Rm91.3mil).
Their number rose to 23,000 in Asia in 2010, the report said, while US business magazine Forbes estimated that China alone has close to 150 billionaires.