The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and Bunks

Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by nostrademons on Thursday August 30, 2018 @04:31PM (#17880459)

The problem is that the market segments such that these travelers are no longer served by commercial aviation. If you are the sort of person whose time is worth $10K/hour, you fly private. You get your bed, and gym, and first-class suite and attendants who wait on your every move, and you also don't have to go through security or wait in the terminal or deal with other passengers.

The lie-flat business class seats aren't actually for those sorts of people, they are for ordinary corporate mid-level employees who fly for business. I have some Googler friends in Australia who will regularly take the bed-seats on the Sydney => SFO run. The company pays for it - when you're going to be paying the employee $10K anyway for the two weeks they're away, and they're generating well over that in value by having the next 3 months of work synced up with what the home office is doing, why would you not?

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Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by sseveran on Thursday August 30, 2018 @05:26PM (#17880932)

Its actually not quite that simple for long distance flying. Most private jets are not G650ERs which have a good long range and can fly a route that an airline might use a 777 or A350 for. The G650 sleeps 10 so you probably wouldn't want more than that for a long hall flight. And I mean if someone was going to let me fly a 650 for the same price as international business I would do it. Figure operating a long range jet runs about $5K per hour exclusive of actually buying and financing the plane. So the flight I am going to take in a couple of months would be roughly $65000 in variable costs.

Even at making 10K per hour ($20M per year) its going to get quite pricey to fly a long range private jet.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2015/november/1...

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