Really, none. It's justified by a grossly inflated sense of the value of their own time. They just don't want to fly with the plebs. And in the case of Adam Neumann in particular, he wanted to hotbox the plane.
In just one cross-country trip, the Gulfstream IV emits nearly double the CO2 that the average American emits in an entire year.
In a normal standard company, the argument for buying a private jet is that the value of the time it saved for the person(s) traveling exceeds the costs of flying & maintaining a jet. Wendover Productions did a pretty good video on the topic. [1]
Or (as in this case): the prestige of flying in on a private jet outweighs the fiscal responsibility concerns of anyone in a position to say "no." Same thing with the Maybach.
This is the justification but is true in only the vanishingly rare case of the company whose activities are constrained by the bandwidth of the CEO, like Tesla. In other cases the CEO should be paying for the jet from his post tax income.
Good idea! Unfortunately I can't search the FAA database right now because apparently it's only available during working hours... https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/
Wal-Mart headquarters is in the middle of nowhere Arkansas. When my wife was there, they had a strict policy that you fly private only when it is cheaper than flying commercial. This mainly only happened when traveling with a team that can fill the jet.
Thanks for adding info on this. Everyone I've talked to who has worked at Wal-Mart HQ has talked about how cost-conscious the entire company is. I would be really surprised if things like private jets there weren't part of a strong cost-benefit analysis.
It also enables high level manager to visit stores and come back in the same day. Or visit 3 stores in two days.
So those same managers are more inclined to go actually visit the stores they are in charge of. Imagine having to visit 5 or 6 walmarts across different small cities, doing it commercially would take a week or more.
Fwiw, the nearby airport, XNA¹, opened in 1998 largely to replace FYV as the facility for commercial service. FYV was a crap airport from a pilot/dispatch perspective and flights often were cancelled when the the weather was below minimums; a frequent event².
As the destination airport for both Wal-Mart execs and vendors seeking an audience, FYV was a huge headache for all involved.
Curiously, XNA had its own problems when in 2011 runway degredation was found, so a temporary one was built while the main runway was torn down and re-slabbed. What a PITA.
¹—at the time of its opening it was nicknamed the "eXtra Nice Airport" as a cute promotional blurb and as a handy mnemonic for its unique IATA code.
²—legend has it that in its initial planning phase the surveyor for the siting of FYV died prior to making a final recommendation; "luckily, " they found on his maps a big red X and assumed that would have been his recommended location. So, rather than contract another surveyor and incur more expense & delay, they just went with that and built it there. However, when the airport opened, the frequently fickle weather there with subsequent disruptions to service led those in the know to acknowledge that the "big red X" must have meant, "this site is completely ruled out." Oops.
Well obviously... The private jets are typically used when a person literally cannot deal with delays due to time pressures on their schedule or geographic constraints. Is that really the case here?
From the article
> The plane was a favorite of Mr. Neumann’s, who would use it frequently to zip between his homes in the Bay Area and New York.
Also, Walmart is a business that actually makes money. Doesn't seem like the same situation.
In just one cross-country trip, the Gulfstream IV emits nearly double the CO2 that the average American emits in an entire year.