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The One Luxury These Billionaires Say They Can't Live Without
Billionaires have been known to indulge in just about every luxury imaginable: Picassos. Diamonds. Private concerts by A-list pop stars. Super yachts with cinemas, spas and submarines. Trips to space.
Because there's almost nothing a three-comma fortune can't buy, billionaires are often accustomed to owning the best of the best of whatever they want. But Forbes wanted to know what indulgence they view as absolutely essential. So this winter, we surveyed many of the world's billionaires on the one luxury they can't live without, with 40 responding.
The most common answer by far was a private jet, which a dozen respondents chose. After that, three listed their phones. A couple shoutouts apiece went to prestige cars, second homes and, yes, air conditioning. And two listed their wives: 'Liz for 57 years!' wrote Charles Koch (estimated net worth: $67.5 billion), chairman of Koch, Inc. Stephen Smith ($6 billion), founder of Canada's First National Financial, said heli-skiing. One anonymous respondent fittingly wrote 'privacy.'
Though 12 is a small sample, hundreds of other billionaires own private jets. So why do they put such a high premium on their planes? In most cases, it's about saving time. The process of traveling to a commercial airport, passing through security, boarding and taxiing typically takes several hours, even without delays. A private jet, meanwhile, can be ready in minutes. Not only can those passengers just show up and go, but they also have far more options for where to take off and land. Texas, for example, has 389 public-use airports, according to its transportation department. Only 25 of those—six percent—are commercial airports.
'We have a large number of locations and it would be impossible to get to them without a private plane,' says billionaire David Hoffmann, who invests in dozens of businesses from luxury transportation to real estate. Hoffmann is based in Naples, Florida but has entities across the country in places like San Diego, Minneapolis, Seattle and St. Louis.
Samir Mane, a retail and real estate entrepreneur, agrees: 'I bought a jet because we don't have good flight connections to many of the countries where we operate.' Mane, who is Albania's first billionaire, is based in Tirana. Visiting his retail outfits in Sarajevo takes 20 minutes via private jet, he says, but would require a full day if he flew commercially. 'If I were based in London, Frankfurt, or Vienna, I wouldn't need a jet, since the flight connections from those cities are excellent.'
'A lot of these companies would struggle to operate if they didn't have their executives getting in and out of meetings across the country on the same day,' explains Hugh Chatham, VP of sales at plane brokerage CFS Jets. Or, as real estate investor Larry Connor put it in his survey response: 'It's not a luxury, it's a business tool.'
Four billionaires wrote that their private plane was the most expensive item they'd ever bought in answer to a separate survey question. Planes tend to depreciate 5% to 10% every year, says Chatham, but most prices in the resale market doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic and have stayed high since. Now, pre-owned jets can cost as little as $1 million for a small, basic craft or as much as $75 million for one in the top tier, like Bombardier's Global 7500; new planes can go up to about $80 million for a business jet, though some billionaires have bought commercial-size airliners that stretch even higher.
Bombardier's Global 7500, which was certified in 2018, is the world's largest business jet.
The standard Global 7500 is a long-range jet that can handle nonstop flights across the world and includes a four-zone cabin, which means that passengers have separate spaces to work, eat, sleep and lounge. Billionaire brothers Lorenzo and Frank Feritta each own one that they bought in 2020 and that are now worth $55 million apiece, Chatham estimates.
Billionaires who've purchased full commercial planes include Russian oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, both of whose aircrafts have been grounded and sanctioned by the U.S. government since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Abramovich purchased his Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in 2018. (That's the same kind of plane that crashed in India earlier this week.) Forbes Russia estimated that it cost him at least $350 million, including upgrades for its 50-passenger setup. Usmanov bought his Airbus A340-300 in 2012 for between $350 and $500 million, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Both are among the largest privately owned jets in Russia.
But while some billionaires splurge on ultra-fancy crafts, many choose simpler options.
'There's a little bit of a stigma around owning a private jet, and I think people don't realize that in a lot of cases, it's not as luxurious as you think,' says Chatham. 'For the most part, these guys are packing people into a tiny airplane where they have to sit there uncomfortable for two to two and a half hours. And that's because it saves them time and saves their company money.'
There is also the increased concern of tracking: The rise of flight tracking apps like FlightAware has made it possible for anyone on the internet to see where and when a plane is flying, which many billionaires feel infringes on their privacy. Some disguise their ownership through layers of LLCs.
If billionaires don't want aircrafts all to themselves—or don't want to shell out the big bucks to store, maintain and staff their own planes—another option is fractional ownership, which means purchasing a share of a plane and access to it for a proportional number of hours per year. Hoffmann says that he and his company use both full and fractional ownership: 'Our demand for flying is that high.' There are also subscription models, whereby customers buy access to a fleet for a month or year at a time.
Alternatives like these can work so well that Mane actually turned to them just two weeks ago. He'd originally bought a used Citation XLS+ in 2021 for $10.8 million—his most expensive purchase ever.
'I sold it last week for $11.8 million,' he said last Thursday. But he still can't live without flying private: 'Now, I use Vista and NetJets.'
