Around the world at Mach 0.80

IF TIME IS MONEY, GORDON GEKKO'S pitch on how to save it defines it. “I’m talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough to not waste time,” he extolls in the 1987 Hollywood cult classic Wall Street.

Flying on Gulfstream’s large cabin G450 from Mumbai to Bangalore, his words make perfect sense. Forget long waits. Getting aboard one of the 200 G450s in the world takes as long as writing the Rs 200 crore cheque if you’re buying one. The aircraft bounds to takeoff in barely 30 seconds and from there on, it’s a cruise at 41,000 feet to 45,000 feet—around 10,000 feet higher than commercial airliners.

The proximity to more favourable winds and no congestion means cuts in fuel burn by an average of about 16% if you’re going from, say, London to Mumbai. At an an operating speed of Mach 0.80 (or some 850 km per hour) the G450 sprints between Mumbai and Bangalore in 69 minutes. That’s 20 minutes faster than a regular airliner.

However, the real time-saver is being able to turn the twin Rolls-Royce engine-powered craft into your own conference room. Think satellite phones, broadband multi-link internet connectivity. Sliding tables and armchairs that swivel around for face-to-face meetings, in a boardroom environment replete with leather and burled wood.

With the press of a button you can coordinate a PowerPoint conference on a large screen panel, or send out a fax to your bank from the sky. There’s total privacy and 100% fresh air for the dozen board members one can accommodate. Commercial airlines recirculate a portion of the cabin air to reduce bleed from the engines to improve fuel efficiency, but this results in stale cabin air.

It’s luxury for customers who brandish it as a style statement, but in a global business deal worth billions of dollars and split-second decision making, a private jet can be the difference to succeeding or not.

Gulfstream, a part of the $32-billion (Rs 1.45 lakh crore), Virginia-based General Dynamics, also maintains a spare parts inventory worth Rs 6,000 crore since having a Jet is pointless if it’s on the ground most of the time.

“Well, they’re [the different manufacturers] all pretty good but I go to a lot of exotic places where I need service support,” says one owner who declined to be named. “And, of course, I love the big windows.”

“The trademark windows make the cabin feel larger,” says Roger Sperry, Gulfstream’s regional senior vice president of international sales. At 388 square inches, two-and-a-half times larger than other jets, they do.

Gulfstream data indicate that 30% of their entire staff, or 3,300 employees, cater to product support across 44 authorised locations in six continents. It has contracted out its service support to Airworks, to take care of customers and aircraft because business is no longer regional, it’s across countries.

Running costs are nearly $3,300 an hour of flying time. That includes fuel, aircraft maintenance, and parts. Airport landing, parking fees, insurance, crew salaries, training and the like are additional and vary globally.

Gulfstream claims that the residual value of a jet ranges anywhere between 50% to 90% of original value, depending on the condition. A 1988 G-IV (the G450’s predecessor) sold for $7 million. That’s something Gekko would have appreciated in the sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, when he walks out of jail, broke and with an outdated cellphone.