富豪为何钟爱私人飞机
The corporate miscreants who keep rock ’n’ roll excess aloft (660 words)

by Ludovic Hunter-Tilney,January 31, 2015 12:04 pm

When the day comes when 1,700 aircraft really do descend on Davos, then the reign of the private jet as the last word in ultra-rich exclusivity will be over.

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The skies over Davos were said to have darkened last week as 1,700 private jets delivered the world’s elite to its annual convocation. You can picture the moment: a shepherd’s child on an Alpine mountain pointing at one, then two, then a vast fleet of hawk-like aircraft materialising with their consignment of power brokers, roaring overhead as the sheep scatter in panic.

But wait. There is a problem with this awesome scene of inequality. The much reported figure of 1,700 jets is a fantasy. Financial journalist Felix Salmon has done the legwork and estimated the actual total to be about 200. So why was the inflated figure so eagerly believed?

The answer lies in the powerful hold of private jet travel on the popular imagination. It is the ultimate symbol of wealth, more so than mansions or limousines or the humble helicopter. It provokes resentment; yet it is also glamorous and exciting. Private jets titillate the non-private jet-flying classes even while offending them. The result is a combustible combination of moralism and desire.

In Sweden outrage runs high at the misuse of corporate jets by directors of the conglomerate, Industrivärden. Families were flown on trips abroad; a plane was sent to Stockholm when an absent-minded industrialist forgot his wallet. The result is one of the biggest corporate scandals in Swedish history. Yet these airborne miscreants were acting in the tradition of a form of transport known for rock ’n’ roll extravagance.

It was a private jet that took Led

Zeppelin on their wild debauches around the US in the 1970s. It is a private jet to which Kanye West refers when he humblebrags in one of his raps: “I’m sorry I’m in pyjamas but I just got off the PJ.” In these pressurised capsules, normal conventions do not apply. If former Korean Air executive Cho Hyun-ah had erupted in fury about her packet of nuts in such a craft there would have been no outcry. Instead she did so in a commercial airliner and found herself delivering an abject public apology.

Technically, private aircraft obey the rules of international airspace. Practically, they are above the law. The hidden, unsupervised space of the cabin is often sexualised; a British tabloid headline recently had the beleaguered Prince Andrew flying on his billionaire friend’s “private ‘sex’ jet”. In previous centuries, the carriage occupied a similar role, as the celebrated scene in Madame Bovary when Emma joins her adulterous lover for a daytime assignation in a curtained cab that travels enigmatically through the streets of their provincial town “tossing about like a vessel”.

Mystery surrounds private jets. They use their own airports and fly on separate routes. To add to the enigmatic air, they also perform the peculiar engineering miracle that is flying. Thus as the private jet whisks its plutocratic occupant over continents and through time zones it appears to defy the laws of physics, suspending time and space, disobeying gravity. It is the ultimate expression of superhuman freedom.

If the submarine is the vehicle of choice for Bond villains as they concoct their gargantuan schemes, the private jet is the favoured transport for those who have actually achieved world domination. It mirrors the restless, invisible migration of money around the globe. As the tycoon accelerates upwards in their sleek, steel tube we are reminded of Marx and Engels, who wrote in The Communist Manifesto of the magically transformative properties of capitalism: “All that is solid melts into air.”

The first Learjet came on to the market in the early 1960s. More than 50 years later, can the private jet maintain its mystique? Falling prices are a risk. For $295,000 you can buy a second-hand 1977 model: a sum well within the reach of the ordinary millionaire. When the day comes when 1,700 aircraft really do descend on Davos, then the reign of the private jet as the last word in ultra-rich exclusivity will be over.

The writer is the FT’s pop critic