[foobiekr]

I honestly don't think the growth is in the wealthy. I know wealthy people and they really haven't changed their habits much.

The people i know who use this sort of thing - booking flights on private jets - are all in their mid-30s and not even remotely wealthy, they don't own their homes, etc. They are just well paid engineers or engineer couples. I can't get my head around it.

I think the best analogy is the growth in status { vehicles, watches, ... }, which also has not been driven by the wealthy, but rather status differentiation between the relatively-affluent-but-still-w2 and the next tier down.

[dillondoyle]

That's surprising to me.

A private jet is super expensive for an engineer, even a senior level on in the valley?

Maybe if you do it for a once a year fancy vacation - within four or five hours (or less).

If you're doing that you're probably also spending at least $600 a night elsewhere maybe a lot more. That could easily be a 30k+ vacation which is what, like 10% of a higher end non owner tech salary? I guess if you don't have a lot of other monthly expenses that's not super unreasonable.

[foobiekr]

Well, yes. I am old and have made decent money. Getting together with a bunch of friends to collectively spend $15k a head just for the flight to do a destination trip is insane to me. I asked, "Why not just fly business class or first?" but "this isn't that much more expensive and is way better."

Well, sure, I've flown on private planes because while I am not wealthy, I know lots of dotcom lottery winners. It's a great experience if you're not footing it. No meaningful security, you arrive, park, and walk out to the plane, then when you land, Enterprise (or whoever) has a car 50 feet away ready to go. Super nice but insane if you aren't at the "I don't even need to think about it" point in terms of retirement savings.

It's vaguely the upper-income silicon valley millennial cohort doing this. I know a few. I can't be alone in that, I don't know _that many_ people in that age range.

[bradknowles]

There are new virtual airlines that operate on top of services like NetJets for their aircraft and on-board personnel, and some of them are a lot less expensive than $15k.

Yes, more expensive than a first class ticket for the same route, but not all that much more expensive — maybe 2x or 3x the cost.

[dillondoyle]

Yeah of course it's amazing if someone else is paying for it ;)

I wonder if it's just imagining people are doing it because of social media.

One can pay a few hundred to just do a 15 minute photo shoot pretending you're riding big. Which is kind of sad.

[ghaff]

I don't know to what degree it's true but you wonder if there's a bit of an attitude along the lines of "I'll never afford a house in California so I might as well fly private and drive a Porsche instead."

[foobiekr]

I think that's possible. Foolish, but possible.