Another example

Here's another scenario where a private plane makes sense.

An emergency arose with a customer about an hour west of Houston and we needed to have 2 people with replacement parts there on the same day. From Dallas we could drive for 7 hours or we could take Southwest Airlines. There are flights leaving all the time between these 2 cities, so scheduling is not difficult. However, the 40 minute flight ends up taking 4 hours:

• 1 hour drive to Love Field


• 1 hour early arrival for security and seating


• 40 minute flight


• 20 minutes to get a rental car


• 1 hour drive to the customer site

An to top it all off, it would be $130 per person each way - or a grand total of $520!

With a 4 seat airplane the flight time was longer, but the door to door time was much better:

• 15 minute drive to the airport


• 15 minutes to preflight the plane


• 105 minute flight


• 10 minutes to park


• 10 minutes for a rental


• 15 minute drive to the customer

Grand total: 2 hours and 50 minutes!

On top of that the total fuel burned was only 33 gallons, for a flight cost of $132.

Obviously this type of travel is not typical for many business, but if your company has a lot of last minute travel, or travel outside of the major cities the cost and time savings can be real.

Clear skies and tailwinds!
Mike

A Concrete Example for Why

How do I answer the question - why do think using a private plane is better than the airlines? Here's a situation that illustrates my answer:

A couple of weeks ago we had a piece of networking equipment fail in an office about 200 miles from the IT staff location. We were faced with three options -

1. Ship the part overnight, which would mean that payroll for that location would not be turned in on time. Not an acceptable solution.

2. Drive to the location with the part (since this site has no nearby airline service). This would cost 3 hours in round trip travel time and would mean that our technician would not arrive home until after 8pm. Doable, yes, but not he best work/life balance that could be achieved.

3. Fly a private plane to the site to replace the part. This would take a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes round trip, would get the site up and running nearly 2 hours earlier, and at no additional cost to the company over driving.

Obviously we chose option 3. It was both faster and cheaper than our alternatives as well as a perfect example of how a small plane can benefit your business. I'll have another scenario next week.

Until then, clear skies and tailwinds!
Mike