Its seems that luxurious private jets are simply not big enough or fast enough. Ultra rich consumers are demanding more out of their luxury jets. There is no recession for the ultra rich and if you build it bigger and faster they will come running.
Demand for jets that don’t need refuelling on intercontinental flights is propping up the market after deliveries of mid-sized and light planes fell last year.
Canada’s Bombardier is leading the drive with the Global 8000, which will travel 14,631 kilometres. General Dynamics’s Gulfstream is set to deliver the first G650, which travels 12,964km and boasts a top speed of Mach 0.925, this year.
Those jets have $50 million-plus price tags, more than 10 times that of models that can’t make it across the US without refuelling. Of jet deliveries last year, heavy jets rose by 2.8 percentage points to 41 per cent while light jets’ share of deliveries slipped 3.1 percentage points to 40 per cent, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Large plane sales have been buoyed by big companies that have better weathered weak growth and can afford long-range jets, said Brad Thress, chief of business jets for Cessna, a unit of Providence, R.I.-based Textron.
Earlier this year, Cessna announced its longest-distance jet ever, the Citation Longitude, with a range of 7,408km. The rapid growth for jets in emerging markets also favours large planes, Steve Ridolfi, president of Bombardier’s business- jet unit, said in an interview.
In countries like China, corporate jets are used mostly by company owners who travel to Europe or the United States. Also, China doesn’t have the general-aviation airports and services that allow more use of small aircraft for domestic flights.