Champagne, pastries and airport queues of under four seconds
Guy Kelly beats the chaos by booking a seat on the latest in luxury travel – ‘semi-private’ planes
It’s a desperate, sweaty thought that any of the millions caught in airport delays and cancellations must have had this summer: “I can’t get a private jet, I’m not made of money. But is there really no other way to do air travel than this?”
Well, fictional frustrated passenger, there is, in fact, another way. A luxurious, seamless way, with hardly any fuss, only a few other like-minded travellers, and no queue longer than four seconds. You don’t have to be “made” of money to take it, either, just… mostly made of money. Around 70 per cent money, let’s say. Sixty, tops, if you’re going one way. All hail the rise of “semi-private” air travel. The semi is silent.
The idea is straightforward: by-the-seat bookings on small, customised jets that fly between some of the world’s most popular destinations, carrying no more than 16 people, and all with the quality of service and space you’d find flying private. Think of it like Uberpool, the taxi app’s service that lets passengers going in the same direction lower the cost of their journey by sharing the price – only in the air, crossing continents, and with each fare costing over a grand.
A mixture of soaring commercial ticket fares, airport chaos and a post-pandemic low tolerance for strangers has meant the private jet industry has rarely been in ruder health. According to Tailhail, Farnborough Airport in Hampshire is reporting a 19.2 per cent increase in flights compared to pre-pandemic levels, while south London’s Biggin Hill is up 74 per cent. And as the number of companies – Aero, Blade, JSX, XO, Wheels Up and more – offering semi-private services rises by the year, many of those planes will be full of wealthy strangers quietly sizing one another up.
Working according to the ancient journalistic principle of “someone’s got to do it”, I tried a mid-morning Aero service from Farnborough to Nice Côte D’azur, then crossed the airport and took a British Airways flight home,
‘My primary touchpoint is on my frosted champagne glass, as I size up the passengers’
occupying myself by wondering exactly how many hectares of forest I need to plant in order to justify my day. A lot. (Aero plants five per ticket, which is… something.)
The company was launched last year by Garrett Camp, the American computer programmer who cofounded Uber with Travis Kalanick in 2009, and has seen riotous demand ever since.
“It’s been crazy lately. Every flight is packed,” one flight attendant tells me after I’ve been met at my taxi door, checked in without me even noticing, breezed through a near-empty lounge, handed a cappuccino and pastry, then glad-handed through security and onto the tarmac with about as much faff as it takes to turn on a light switch. Passengers are asked to arrive 45 minutes before boarding.
Aero normally uses a menacinglooking black jet with 16 seats, but since that’s busy on the other European route, Ibiza to Mykonos, we are lumbered with what I’m told is “just a standard Legacy 600”. I look around at the personalised name tags, the little Green & Blacks displayed just so, the cream leather seats (including in the bathroom) with mahogany trim, the pre-poured champagne… Yeah, piece of rubbish.
A thing that people make a big deal of in private vs commercial air travel is “touchpoints” – the number of interactions, be they physical tasks, text messages, document checks with staff – involved in a journey. The lower the number, the better. When you fly private, the figure is said to be around 20, while boarding a commercial plane is more like 700.
My primary touchpoint is on my frosted champagne glass, while I size up the other passengers. Each seat set them back £1,200, which is about 5 per cent of what chartering a fully private jet to Nice might cost at short notice, but about 1,000 per cent of what an Easyjet ticket goes for. So they must be the kind of people who consider this “value”.
Three elderly, well-to-do people clamber on with Breitling bags. Next, a Philip Green lookalike and his wife. Then a couple who looked as if they might have been on the longlist for Love Island. And next to me, a mysterious Russian twentysomething. Later she will shoot me a devastating look when I accidentally fling a grape at her foot. Every type of rich person is here, like an Agatha Christie novel.
Before I’ve had time to decide who’d murder whom, we’ve landed, been ushered into a taxi on the tarmac, and slipped through the border with barely a nod from the guards. At Gatwick that night, I’m greeted by a 400-person taxi queue and train strikes. “Will you be flying back with us, Guy?” the flight attendant asked. I wish.