This is uninformed, media driven, jealousy based, and wrong.
Here's why.
The more your time is worth, the more it costs the company to have you sit idle, like when you are going through airport security, waiting for delays, wating for connecting flights, etc. Now factor in multiple highly pai
d employees, all waiting, and the costs go way up.
Private jets exist for the same reason that you drive a car and don't take the bus. Time savings. Plus the bus doesn't go exactly where you want to go... but this really is another form of time savings.
All large corporations have their own flight departments for this exact reason. They fly to airports that don't have airline service that are closest to their plant, or closest to their vendor, or closest to their customer. They fly direct, not through some hub and spoke system. They leave early, get their business done, and fly on to the next destination the second they are done with the first. They get far more done in a day.
The same holds true for cargo. There are times you need something at any cost. When a large production line goes down due to a mechanical failure, and the factory needs parts, it is costing tens of thousands of dollars every hour that line is down. It is cost efficient to send an empty airplane halfway across the country to get the needed part, right now, not FedEx tomorrow, to get the part. That is what private aviation is all about.
Yes, the occaisional CEO takes a perk and flies to Hilton Head and plays golf.
Yes, the CEO salary is big. (I'd be in favor of more shareholder control of CEO salaries, but that's another thread) But don't think for a minute that corporate jets are all about greed. They are all about efficient use of time and money.
The media pointing out that the executives of the auto bailout arrived in private jets is just missing the whole point, and is pandering to tabloid journalism instead of actually doing some investigation and reporting the facts. You put several executives, plus their attorneys in a plane, and the combined cost per hour of their salaries creates a much bigger savings by going private than going on 'the bus', ie commercial aviation.
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