Hooo, as if the business jet industry doesn't have enough image problems to battle, here comes Suze Orman, the self-described "internationally acclaimed personal finance expert" sounding all late-stage Versailles in an interview in this month's Business Jet Traveler magazine.
"What does flying privately do for you?" the magazine asked her.
The internationally acclaimed personal finance expert explained, reasonably, that private jets provide efficiency. But then her second reason, weirdly: "Health."
Suze sez that "the chances are very great [on an airliner] that some kid's gonna sneeze on me and then I get sick. If I am, it's millions of dollars on some level somewhere."
Note to Citizen Robespierre: Sieze this woman!
Seriously, the business aviation industry, struggling mightily to regain some footing after the image and economic disasters of the last six months, can do without this kind of defense.
Speaking of business aviation, the numbers continue on the grim march downward.
ARG/US, which measures these things, says that business-aircraft flights dropped 26.2 percent in March, compared with March of 2008. The biggest drop was in flights of large cabin jets, which were off 44 percent.
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Hmmm.....maybe I'm missing something but I fail to understand how Suze's mention of the "health" aspect of business jet travel vs. commercial jet travel....is in any way negative toward the "defense" of using private jet transportation. Please tell me/us how it's negative?
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John Owen
It's tone-deaf, is why. Sounds extremely snotty toward us great unwashed on commercial airlines. Tone-deaf like the three Detroit CEOs who swanned into Washington on the G5's. There are a lot of good defenses of the sensible use of private jets, and I've made them all from time to time, but the industry right now has to overcome a very emotional public backlash, worse in intensity than the similar PR problems in the late 80s, early 90s (anyone remember F. Ross Johnson flying his poodle on his Air RJR fleet? Took the industry years to overcome that stuff.) So Orman's evident disdain for the American public is not helpful from the industry perspective.
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