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Hindustan Times
7 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
How Flying on a Private Jet Became the No. 1 Marker of Real Wealth
When Maxx Chewning sold his sour-candy business to Hershey for $75.5 million, the first thing he did—before buying a Rolex or dream home—was jet his wife and six friends to Vail on a Dassault Falcon 900. They skipped security lines, zipped straight to the runway and seated themselves in leather recliners with gold accents in the wood-paneled cabin. The price tag for this adventure: $100,000. Chewning's goldendoodle, Dood, sprawled at their feet. 'The joke is, I had to get a private plane so I could bring my dog,' the 35-year-old said. 'I didn't really care what the price was.' The ultrawealthy have always enjoyed flying private. That exclusive club is growing, as soaring stocks and crypto prices mint more millionaires and billionaires, who now have a range of choices to book a seat on a jet. Flying private has become the ultimate luxury splurge for many wealthy individuals, surpassing Ferraris, Hermès Birkin bags topping $14,000 or even waterfront Hamptons homes. For many of those aspiring to join the ranks of the truly rich, having 'private-jet money' is the new goal, dividing the 1% from the 0.1%. The pandemic unleashed a burst of demand, but providers say popular culture has turbocharged enthusiasm and envy for the fly-private lifestyle. Social media has given younger people a glimpse into the lives of jet-setters, whether it is a model flying with friends to a bachelorette party in Los Cabos, Mexico, or a hedge-fund manager hopping a plane to a birthday weekend in St. Barts. Realistic expectations are in order. 'It is my dream to fly private,' says a user on a Reddit forum for so-called Henrys (which refers to high earners, not rich yet), adding that he earns about $300,000, is married and has a kid in daycare. 'Definitely closer to broke than flying private,' another user responds. Yet the number of people who are rich enough has surged. The club of ultrahigh net worth individuals with more than $30 million in assets hit a record in 2024, according to estimates from the wealth-intelligence provider Altrata. The U.S. added more than 1,000 millionaires every day last year on average, according to UBS. The billionaire club grew more than 50% between 2015 and 2024. Private-jet hours flown touched an all-time high in 2022 and have stayed elevated since then, according to data from the aviation-services firm Argus International. Travelers can now use apps to snag individual seats on private jets or pay for flights by the hour. Others charter flights, paying for just the occasional trip from New York to Miami, while the rare business mogul might spring for the entire jet. Some jet providers accept payment in crypto. Shrimp cocktail and facials Kenn Ricci, a pilot and chairman of Flexjet, a private-jet company, says the 'frugal wealthy'—high earners who typically didn't splurge—started spending big on travel during the pandemic because of health concerns. Many of them have found it tough to go back to flying commercially. And years of economic growth have helped ease the stigma around conspicuous consumption that set in after the 2008-09 financial crisis. 'It's in vogue to be wealthy,' he says. 'Sometimes we love the rich. Sometimes we hate the rich.' It isn't just avoiding the security line, or the hoi polloi. Flying private means trading Biscoff cookies for freshly baked ones and picking lunch of shrimp cocktail or filet mignon from menus spanning a dozen pages. Chef Nobu Matsuhisa crafted a menu for VistaJet that includes miso salmon. Some cabin hosts are trained to give travelers facials 40,000 feet above the ground—with Dr. Barbara Sturm's line of luxury skin care. Tennille Holt spends much of her time traveling the world with her husband and 8-year-old cavapoo, Hudson. Flexjet hosted members in Lake Como last year, whisking them to a yacht excursion and black-tie dinner. Guests tried on jewels by Garrard, the jeweler that has designed pieces for England's royal family, including brooches for Queen Elizabeth II. Tennille Holt, 44, retired in 2023 and now spends much of her time traveling the world with her husband and 8-year-old cavapoo, Hudson. Hudson has his own Instagram account documenting his life, including his private-jet flights, where he is often served his favorite: grilled chicken. She and her husband spent around $200,000 to fly Hudson from Australia to Los Angeles in a Bombardier Global 6000 and avoid the commercial flight. She recalls dreaming about this flexibility while working long days and nights as an entrepreneur. 'The goal was to create the freedom to live life on our own terms, which now includes plenty of travel and the ability to fly privately whenever we want, ' Holt says. 'It's the best and most comfortable option for Hudson.' Flush with cash Around a third of wealth-management firms working with high-net-worth individuals now offer concierge or lifestyle services, such as private aviation, according to a survey by Cerulli Associates. Money managers for the superrich advise tech and crypto millionaires and billionaires on exactly which aircraft to buy and how to finance it. They liaise with bankers on issuing debt should clients prefer to borrow the money against their swelling investment portfolios—making monthly interest payments on the aircraft rather than putting tens of millions of dollars down. After noticing heavy spending on flights, Corient, a wealth manager with around $200 billion in assets, started helping clients team up to share private jets by buying fractional slices of planes or prepaid jet cards. Family offices, which are private entities that manage large pools of money for wealthy families, are turning to advisers to help them purchase jets outright, which can run into the tens of millions of dollars. Some advisers connect clients with those who can train aircraft crews or offer concierge services for trip planning. At Goldman Sachs, dedicated plane experts connect their ultrarich clients with financiers and point the clients to those who can customize interiors or renovate jets. Hudson during a trip on a private jet. Nishi Somaiya, global head of private banking, lending and deposits at Goldman, says there has been a flurry of inquiries this summer. President Trump's tax overhaul includes a deduction for aircraft used for business travel, a welcome perk for clients who frequently mix their work trips with pleasure. Kevin Hooks, 63, a Flexjet client and veteran flier, says he spends around $800,000 annually mostly crisscrossing the Southwest in a Praetor 600 midsize business jet that seats 9. He has noticed plane hangars around the country growing more crowded because of increased demand since the pandemic. Hooks, who has been flying privately since he sold his pharmaceuticals business around two decades ago, has also taken a liking to private helicopters, recently taking one between Normandy and London. The trip saved him eight hours, giving him more time to search for buried World War II relics. He sometimes still takes commercial planes. He recalls the time his son, then 4 years old, got on a Southwest Airlines flight and asked, 'Who are these other people on the plane?' Write to Gunjan Banerji at How Flying on a Private Jet Became the No. 1 Marker of Real Wealth How Flying on a Private Jet Became the No. 1 Marker of Real Wealth
Mint
04-08-2025
- Business
- Mint
How flying on a private jet became the no. 1 marker of real wealth
When Maxx Chewning sold his sour-candy business to Hershey for $75.5 million, the first thing he did—before buying a Rolex or dream home—was jet his wife and six friends to Vail on a Dassault Falcon 900. They skipped security lines, zipped straight to the runway and seated themselves in leather recliners with gold accents in the wood-paneled cabin. The price tag for this adventure: $100,000. Chewning's goldendoodle, Dood, sprawled at their feet. 'The joke is, I had to get a private plane so I could bring my dog,' the 35-year-old said. 'I didn't really care what the price was.' The ultrawealthy have always enjoyed flying private. That exclusive club is growing, as soaring stocks and crypto prices mint more millionaires and billionaires, who now have a range of choices to book a seat on a jet. Flying private has become the ultimate luxury splurge for many wealthy individuals, surpassing Ferraris, Hermès Birkin bags topping $14,000 or even waterfront Hamptons homes. For many of those aspiring to join the ranks of the truly rich, having 'private-jet money' is the new goal, dividing the 1% from the 0.1%. The pandemic unleashed a burst of demand, but providers say popular culture has turbocharged enthusiasm and envy for the fly-private lifestyle. Social media has given younger people a glimpse into the lives of jet-setters, whether it is a model flying with friends to a bachelorette party in Los Cabos, Mexico, or a hedge-fund manager hopping a plane to a birthday weekend in St. Barts. Realistic expectations are in order. 'It is my dream to fly private,' says a user on a Reddit forum for so-called Henrys (which refers to high earners, not rich yet), adding that he earns about $300,000, is married and has a kid in daycare. 'Definitely closer to broke than flying private,' another user responds. Yet the number of people who are rich enough has surged. The club of ultrahigh net worth individuals with more than $30 million in assets hit a record in 2024, according to estimates from the wealth-intelligence provider Altrata. The U.S. added more than 1,000 millionaires every day last year on average, according to UBS. The billionaire club grew more than 50% between 2015 and 2024. Private-jet hours flown touched an all-time high in 2022 and have stayed elevated since then, according to data from the aviation-services firm Argus International. Travelers can now use apps to snag individual seats on private jets or pay for flights by the hour. Others charter flights, paying for just the occasional trip from New York to Miami, while the rare business mogul might spring for the entire jet. Some jet providers accept payment in crypto. Kenn Ricci, a pilot and chairman of Flexjet, a private-jet company, says the 'frugal wealthy'—high earners who typically didn't splurge—started spending big on travel during the pandemic because of health concerns. Many of them have found it tough to go back to flying commercially. And years of economic growth have helped ease the stigma around conspicuous consumption that set in after the 2008-09 financial crisis. 'It's in vogue to be wealthy,' he says. 'Sometimes we love the rich. Sometimes we hate the rich.' It isn't just avoiding the security line, or the hoi polloi. Flying private means trading Biscoff cookies for freshly baked ones and picking lunch of shrimp cocktail or filet mignon from menus spanning a dozen pages. Chef Nobu Matsuhisa crafted a menu for VistaJet that includes miso salmon. Some cabin hosts are trained to give travelers facials 40,000 feet above the ground—with Dr. Barbara Sturm's line of luxury skin care. Tennille Holt spends much of her time traveling the world with her husband and 8-year-old cavapoo, Hudson. Flexjet hosted members in Lake Como last year, whisking them to a yacht excursion and black-tie dinner. Guests tried on jewels by Garrard, the jeweler that has designed pieces for England's royal family, including brooches for Queen Elizabeth II. Tennille Holt, 44, retired in 2023 and now spends much of her time traveling the world with her husband and 8-year-old cavapoo, Hudson. Hudson has his own Instagram account documenting his life, including his private-jet flights, where he is often served his favorite: grilled chicken. She and her husband spent around $200,000 to fly Hudson from Australia to Los Angeles in a Bombardier Global 6000 and avoid the commercial flight. She recalls dreaming about this flexibility while working long days and nights as an entrepreneur. 'The goal was to create the freedom to live life on our own terms, which now includes plenty of travel and the ability to fly privately whenever we want, ' Holt says. 'It's the best and most comfortable option for Hudson.' Around a third of wealth-management firms working with high-net-worth individuals now offer concierge or lifestyle services, such as private aviation, according to a survey by Cerulli Associates. Money managers for the superrich advise tech and crypto millionaires and billionaires on exactly which aircraft to buy and how to finance it. They liaise with bankers on issuing debt should clients prefer to borrow the money against their swelling investment portfolios—making monthly interest payments on the aircraft rather than putting tens of millions of dollars down. After noticing heavy spending on flights, Corient, a wealth manager with around $200 billion in assets, started helping clients team up to share private jets by buying fractional slices of planes or prepaid jet cards. Family offices, which are private entities that manage large pools of money for wealthy families, are turning to advisers to help them purchase jets outright, which can run into the tens of millions of dollars. Some advisers connect clients with those who can train aircraft crews or offer concierge services for trip planning. At Goldman Sachs, dedicated plane experts connect their ultrarich clients with financiers and point the clients to those who can customize interiors or renovate jets. Hudson during a trip on a private jet. Nishi Somaiya, global head of private banking, lending and deposits at Goldman, says there has been a flurry of inquiries this summer. President Trump's tax overhaul includes a deduction for aircraft used for business travel, a welcome perk for clients who frequently mix their work trips with pleasure. Kevin Hooks, 63, a Flexjet client and veteran flier, says he spends around $800,000 annually mostly crisscrossing the Southwest in a Praetor 600 midsize business jet that seats 9. He has noticed plane hangars around the country growing more crowded because of increased demand since the pandemic. Hooks, who has been flying privately since he sold his pharmaceuticals business around two decades ago, has also taken a liking to private helicopters, recently taking one between Normandy and London. The trip saved him eight hours, giving him more time to search for buried World War II relics. He sometimes still takes commercial planes. He recalls the time his son, then 4 years old, got on a Southwest Airlines flight and asked, 'Who are these other people on the plane?' Write to Gunjan Banerji at
Boston Globe
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A mini megachurch is slowly taking over the Liberty Tree Mall
People mingled outside Netcast. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff No one ever guesses it's a church, let alone a church that now fills a huge chunk of the innards of the mall, hosting 1,000 people during two services on a typical Sunday. Its membership is growing so rapidly that Netcast recently leased a third storefront to create overflow seating for people who couldn't fit into the main church. If you find it weird for a booming 'mini' megachurch to be located in a mall across from an arcade that just has claw machines, Matt Chewning, the church's founder and lead pastor, would agree with you. But he would also tell you it's working. Advertisement 'It's been amazing to see people rolling into Marshalls to return something and suddenly finding themselves checking out our church,' he said. Others find their way into the coffee shop, asking about what's going on. 'It happens every week. A large part of our church has simply stumbled in.' Netcast — think casting a net, a reference to a story from the Gospel of Matthew — has been around since 2010, when Chewning, a former college basketball player, started preaching out of his Beverly home. Netcast is a Christian church, but unaffiliated with any denomination, and intentionally laid-back. This isn't the kind of church where people show up in their 'Sunday best'; Chewning is fond of preaching in a T-shirt and sneakers. Advertisement Pastor Matt Chewning delivered his sermon on a recent Sunday. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Chewning first had the idea to move his church into the mall when he walked out of the AMC one day in 2018, noticed a store with the ridiculous name 'Kids 4 Less,' and kind of joked to himself that they'd let anyone in there. At the time, Netcast was searching hard for a place to move the church, after a long run at Briscoe Middle School in Beverly, which began in 2012. When the middle school moved into an And why not the the opposite of claustrophobia, you can find it quickly on the walk down the Olympic-length walled-in corridor that leads to Kohl's. That's because the mall is structured around big box retailers such as Target, Best Buy, and Total Wine & More that you enter directly from the parking lot, rather than the mall proper. Chewning knows all about how important a mall can be for building community. He's 42 and grew up in New Jersey when its mall culture was the stuff of legend, and it's not like Netcast is the first church to set up in a mall. Just across Route 114 at the Advertisement It took 18 months to build out the main church, which has 350 seats and is entered through the coffee shop, and on March 12, 2020, Netcast received its certificate of occupancy. It never got the chance to hold a service before the world shut down. The mall it returned to after COVID was more tumbleweedy. The movie theater was doing nowhere near its former numbers, and the food court became barren. Yet Netcast thrived by betting on two things: people were looking for a church that didn't feel like a church; and Pastor Matt Chewning called his wife Beth Chewning up to the stage to acknowledge her on Mother's Day during a service. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Chewning gives off the vibe of a cocky ex-hooper but has an earnest self-deprecation to his conversations and his preaching, leaning more toward the questions he's asking himself than the answers he's found. He came to Christianity somewhat accidentally, after he was recruited to play basketball at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy. He said he had zero interest in religion, but he was surprised to find himself drawn to a group of fellow students at the Christian college who were committed believers, including his soon-to-be wife Beth. He went all in quickly, and after college, when he and Beth were living in North Carolina with their four children, he felt called to start a church of his own, affiliated with nothing except the Bible. Advertisement To accomplish that goal, the couple set their sites on a return to Massachusetts, which they describe as 'under-reached.' In 2010, a 27-year-old Matt Chewning held the first Netcast service in the living room of their home for 30 people he met on Facebook. His message, and Netcast itself, has been under construction ever since, by design. 'Other churches tell you what they believe and want you to adopt those beliefs. We think it's a process, and we want people to feel comfortable being in process.' Chewning said the mall, like the elementary school before it, was a perfect fit for his style of church, because he always wanted it to feel like it was in the center of a community, not tucked away on the outskirts. But even he has been surprised by the growth of the church since moving into the mall. 'We didn't move in thinking it was some marketing idea of 'Location, location, location.' It was never about growth. It was about having enough space for the people we had. And now . . . we just don't have enough seats.' A woman followed along with the Bible reading from the overflow room at Netcast. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Chewning said he's in talks with the mall about building a 1,000-seat auditorium. Already, Netcast is hosting Sunday school-type classes in two of the theaters at AMC, and it just opened the 200-seat overflow room, where people can watch the main service on a video feed. Chewning always tells everyone the church is about Jesus, and the rest they try to keep simple. 'People don't have a problem with Jesus, they have a problem with churches,' he said. 'Even the word 'church' comes with all sorts of baggage. We don't hide that we're a church, but it's not on the door.' Advertisement Chewning said the church has a loose congregation of about 2,000 people and that typically half of them come to church on a Sunday. (There are services at 9 and 11 a.m.) And Netcast, as well as nontraditional churches like it, are growing in an era in which Claire Simmons prayed during a worship song at Netcast, inside the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, on May 11. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff So what is a Netcast service? On a recent Sunday, the 11 a.m. service began, as usual, with a full-on concert, a 40-minute set performed by three guitarists, a drummer, a keyboardist, and two singers, working their way through several modern Christian rock songs while a multimedia display accompanied them on the giant screens that ring the stage. When Chewning finally swaggered on, carrying an iPad and a Bible, he was wearing white Reeboks and a baggy T-shirt that read 'Living Testimony.' He preached for nearly 50 minutes on a theme of ' It's a new concept of 'church' for a new age. And it's all happening inside the Liberty Tree Mall, next door to a Five Below, for an audience that was on its way somewhere else and instead found a church — and then kept coming back. The Quadros-Lopez family, of Peabody, left the Liberty Tree Mall after attending a Netcast church service. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Billy Baker can be reached at
The Guardian
29-01-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Ukraine reels from ‘worst-case scenario' suspension of US foreign aid
Ukraine is reeling from the shock decision by the Trump administration to pause all US foreign aid programmes immediately, as a variety of projects in the country – from military veteran rehabilitation programmes to independent media and anti-corruption initiatives – have effectively been stopped overnight. It was seen as inevitable that the incoming administration would overhaul USAid, the US development agency, but there was an expectation that spending on Ukraine, or at least some of the most critical programmes, would be subject to a waiver – or there would at least be a winding-down period. Instead, a 'stop-work' order issued last Friday has left hundreds of projects without funding, initially for a 90-day review period. Attempts by the Kyiv USAid office to save funding for some of the most important programmes have reportedly been rebuffed in Washington. 'They requested a waiver for some of the things they considered critical but didn't get it,' said a source familiar with discussions over the future of USAid in Ukraine. 'It's clear that the new administration wants to destroy what was there before and build something completely new.' The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his government would prioritise the most important USAid-funded programmes and try to cover them with alternative funding solutions. 'There are programmes like those for prosthetic limbs, or those on special rehabilitation, which obviously can't just be ended abruptly. There will be a prioritisation,' said Zelenskyy's adviser Mykhailo Podolyak in an interview on Wednesday. Military aid and direct budgetary assistance to Ukraine have not so far been affected, but USAid had sent more than $7.6bn (£6.11bn) in humanitarian and development aid since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and backed a remarkable range of projects across many sectors. 'This was the worst-case scenario,' said George Chewning, the executive director of US-Ukraine Veterans Bridge, an organisation devoted to fostering links between military veterans in the two countries. He said several partner organisations in Ukraine had suddenly found out their projects would no longer be continued. One, Veteran Hub, said it was closing a telephone hotline that had provided support and counselling to traumatised veterans. 'A lot of people thought there might be a thorough review and were prepared to justify their work and their projects but there certainly wasn't an expectation that the funding would be halted,' said Chewning. For veterans' organisations, the cuts could not have come at a worse time, said Chewning, as Donald Trump's desire to negotiate an end to the war could result in hundreds of thousands of newly demobilised veterans needing to re-integrate into society. 'All our partners are now scrambling for additional funding, which was not easy to come by in the first place,' he said. USAid also handled a large number of regional humanitarian aid projects, many of which were left pondering how to fill the newly created gaps, and without any idea what would remain after the three-month review period. 'It just impacts our morale … Do we wait for their continuation? Do we redirect these projects to other agencies? We don't really know what to do,' said Vitalii Lukov, the deputy mayor of the southern city of Mykolaiv, which has been reliant on international aid since being severely damaged in the early months of the war. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion 'USAid was the quickest to provide us with diesel generators and the energy efficiency projects are almost finished. But what will we do if Russia attacks our energy again tomorrow?' Lukov asked. The US development agency was also a supporter of many of Ukraine's independent media outlets. Bohdan Lohvynenko, the founder of the Ukraïner online news portal, said more than 80% of the site's funding came from the US, and the outlet was now in serious trouble. 'There is no viable advertising market for war reporting, leaving us with community support or a paywall model,' he said. However, raising money in this way during wartime was very difficult, he said, with most citizens preferring to use their money to support the military. 'Some [media outlets] will survive but many will not. Already a lot of people are losing their jobs,' said Katerina Sergatskova, a co-founder of the 2042 foundation, which provides support and training to Ukrainian journalists. 'If places have a cash reserve they may be able to survive for the next three months,' she said, until it became clear which USAid projects would be continued. The stop-work order meant that projects were abruptly ended with almost no warning. Oleh Velhan was one of thousands of Ukrainians to receive an email earlier this week informing him that his service agreement would be suspended, starting from Wednesday and 'until further notice'. Velhan worked for a company that provided services to an organisation working in the healthcare sector. The suspension was in order to 'assess the effectiveness of programs and their compliance with United States foreign policy', said the email. A few minutes after receiving the message, Velhan found he was locked out of his work email account. 'I felt frustrated and angry. All the projects I had been working on are gone. I've been notified that the contract might be renewed … but the uncertainty is killing me,' he said.
