Month: May 2010

Okay, so maybe you consider bad press bad.  And after you read about the rant on this guy’s site about how much Steve Jobs is using the Apple private jet to travel the world, or how even some of his travel frequency dropped, you can get to the really good part of this post:  The comments that followed it.

The essential point is, like in yesterday’s post, that there’s no question the news media and now certain bloggers are enjoying bashing those who have use of a private or corporate jet.  They just love it.  Maybe they can’t help it.  But the reality is when you read the comments, your average Joe doesn’t care!

Here, see for yourself:

fox1cm said 10:00AM on 4-26-2010

My stocks up, so I could care less about how much it costs or where he’s going as long as he delivers results.

Thanh said 9:57AM on 4-26-2010

Safety, perhaps? Steve Jobs is by no means obscure, or a plebeian- Most people would recognize him, and it would open him up for danger, as well as unnecessary news coverage.

DarwinianReject said 1:05PM on 4-26-2010

He’s not like everyone else. He’s Steve Jobs! Apple is one of the new companies to remain profitable despite the recession. And that’s largely in part to SJ, So perhaps a few perks are in order. And as long as no taxpayer money is being used, I could care less how he gets around. It’s a private company, it can do whatever it wants with it’s private money.

mike said 1:58PM on 4-26-2010

Do you have any idea why corporate heads actually have private jets like this? It’s obvious from your posts that you don’t. Let me explain.

Most corporate heads, such as Steve Jobs, have access to private jets for business

reasons, and a small alottment of time for personal use that is stipulated in theIr contracts. See the thing with these executives is that they need to be places much quicker, more often, and for more important things than your typical traveler. I know you’ll probaby just reiterate the whole environmental argument (doesn’t hold much water, planes like the GV are much more efficient than most commercial airliners) or say “well why should they get to travel quicker than the rest of us?”. It’s not a perk, it’s a means of doing rapid, high level business requred of these executives. People need to get past the picture of big wigs just flying around to wherever they want whenever they want. Not how it works.

Besides, maybe you think that the President should start flying around on commercial flights, because it’s silly and not green. to have one 747 flying around him and a handful of people?

All very rational rebuttals to the frequent jabs made about the private jet industry, and more importantly, made from real people.

Well, as much as the main stream media likes to write about corporate executives owning their own aircraft, you have to wonder about the proverbial man who talked about their being a plank in someone else’s eye, but couldn’t see the one in his.

Sure, a lot of the big networks will put reporters on a commercial airline and send them to do a story.  But in all your travels, have you ever really seen that happen?  Yeah, there was the guy in Die Hard 2 who deservedly wound up getting tasered in the onboard bathroom, but this isn’t really how most network reporters travel.

And when you think of the big urban stations what’s the latest thing for them to all brag about?  Simple.  Not just that they provide daily chopper coverage of morning traffic, fires, car accidents, police chases, natural disasters, tornadoes, and on and on, but also that they now can do it in HD.

There clearly are benefits to owning ones own corporate jet.  We still live in a day and age when and eye-to-eye handshake to close a deal means more than just doing so over a conference call.   Some times just being there, showing a prospect that they are important enough to you to make a personal appearance is all it can take to land the big one.  Just like to the media flying above the scene of a tragedy is something that outwits and out does their competitor stations in a market, or gets them immediately piped in to CNN or FOX News.

It’s time to start calling the news media on this.  Owning ones own personal aircraft has value.  If you want to see it in action, when you wake up in the morning, just turn on the TV.