Look! Up In The Sky: When Time Means Money, Air Charter Can Be A Compelling Value (2026 Transportation Special)

The word “private” in relation to flying brings visions of luxury, sipping champagne while traveling across the world in style. There is some of that – and if the biggest stars in the world don’t get to, who does? – but flying private is becoming increasingly efficient and even practical for artists and their touring teams.

“On these complex worldwide tours for rock bands, professional sports teams or presidential campaigns, those kinds of groups, the cost of them not getting there, whether it’s to play a concert, give a speech that’s televised, or play a baseball game, the cost of not getting there far exceeds the cost of the transportation itself,” says Greg Raiff of Elevate Jet, which manages and owns private aircraft, offers booking solutions and other related services, as well as owns one of the few available Boeing 757-200 VIP high-capacity luxury passenger jets.

“When you think about the position of a production manager or tour manager, a lot of times their greatest fear in life is not getting fired by their band for doing something highly visible – no one’s going to look that closely at the reconciliation of a hotel for the last 500 bucks, But when the band doesn’t make it to a show and they’re all over the press for showing up late, it’s hard to walk away from that one.”

Luxury private jets, while offering the most comfortable flying experience possible, also are sometimes required for a touring party’s A-listers, which in the case of large bands with families can mean outgrowing a 16-passenger executive jet quickly. Efficiency of flying private can mean saving enough time to add extra gigs to a tour, or even keep a band near retirement from hanging it up quite yet.

“Obviously we want the bands to go out and tour again, and the only way that happens is if they have a hassle-free, stress-free easy environment where they can play 18 dates, pick up their check and say wow, that was easy, let’s do it again,” Raiff said.

Raiff, who got started in the aviation industry while still in college and has grown to a major player in the industry by combining services and vertically integrating aspects like having its own in-house maintenance and repair organization, airline scheduling and retail division, “which allows us to control the experience as much as we can,” Raiff says. “I’m never happier than when a client allows us to book the ground transfers for them, because then I can end-to-end the thing.”

The world of private aviation means much is out of control, from foreign airports finding themselves in the middle of a government coup to unpredictable weather patterns making best-laid plans now untenable. Raiff says the important thing is to let everyone involved know any bad news before it becomes too late.

“I’ve learned over my years in the industry that communication and proactivity are the two most important things,” says Raiff. “When I meet people just starting out music touring, (I tell them) it’s not crying wolf, just present all the information, present your recommendation and explain why. Then let the smart people out there, the ones making the gazillions of dollars, make the decision. They know what they’re doing. No one blames me for weather or when a plane is grounded for a safety reason.”

Another factor out of control is fuel prices. Jet fuel price volatility spiked with U.S. military involvement in Iran closing off the Strait of Hormuz, which regularly sees 20 million barrels worth of oil per day and whose closure has seen gas prices of all sorts spike, leading to economic turmoil at the pump and in the air, punctuated by the abrupt closure of budget airliner Spirit Airlines and immediate cancellation of its approximately 300 daily flights.

Spirit attorney Marshall Huebner said Tuesday in court that rising jet fuel costs since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran “engulfed Spirit entirely.” Spirit’s fuel expenses grew by roughly $100 million “in March and April alone,” he said, and rapidly drained Spirit’s liquidity and derailed its restructuring efforts.

This has had an immediate impact on those in the private air charter industry, especially brokers who source planes for clients in music, sports and entertainment.

“Everyone’s kind of waiting with bated breath to find out what that really means,” says industry veteran David Young, co-founder and CEO of TrueSkies Aviation Group, which launched two years ago. “And how’s it gonna trickle down to artists and takes shape. There’s a lot in flux right now.” Added volatility and uncertainty in fuel prices means fine print coming into play and margins getting tighter for everyone involved, and likely prices passed on to consumers — as long as they can sustain it. Surcharges and “special” fees along the way means more clients getting sticker shock until things stabilize, which, these days, is another uncertainty as the news cycle throws new surprises and wrenches that the global markets didn’t see coming. Still, trends had been positive in the world of private flight.

“The business in general has grown at a pretty nice clip in all forms – fractional card programs and on-demand charter at about a 3.2% clip year over year since COVID,” says Young. “Obviously there’s a huge rise in people who didn’t fly private that started to fly private – the market tripled after COVID after everything went kind of dark and then tripled and then leveled off. But they’re still seeing a bump again. They think this year could be a 5% increase.”

While a sudden price increase is no one’s idea of a good time, and fuel spikes and shortages are nothing new in the big scheme of things, Young and his TrueSkies team think that while maybe some touring parties will opt for a bus on shorter domestic runs, “the bigger is not that people are really locked into flying private won’t find a way to fly private, it’s more the blue-dot fever, low attendance canceling tours altogether and how that trends out,” Young says. No one wants to be overly confident, but the live entertainment industry has weathered storms before. “Let’s say fuel mellows, but the shockwaves of fuel prices leads to global shortages and all sorts of things and a recession. I’m telling you, I’ve been through that before and I’m not personally too scared by it.”

Raiff contends that fuel prices’ biggest impact likely will be on the road rather than air.

“Mobile on-demand, power generation, all the lights, the back line – the amount of fuel consumed by all the trucks, to move all the steel, far exceeds the number of gallons of jet fuel burned to move a party around on a private flight,” says Raiff. “We might burn somewhere between 300 and 900 gallons to fly someone 500 miles. Think about how many gallons of diesel it takes to move 50 trucks that same distance, right? No one wants fuel prices to go up, but it’s a much bigger concern for the business managers around the cost of energy.”

All in all, Raiff says the number of requests for private air remains higher than ever, thanks to accurate quotes and up-front information.

“The number of requests in the live entertainment touring industry since 2019 is up 200%,” says Raiff, emphasizing the growth comes before the pandemic and is not inflated by the lack of activity due to COVID. He says private engagements are becoming increasingly common for artists, made possible largely thanks to accurate information presented up-front. ”Sure enough, for every one of those, when they looked at doing it, they called and asked for a budget for the air from their home to the private and back home 24 hours later, and factored that into their decision-making. So, it’s nice to have built out this real partnership and trust with the people making recommendations to the artists. Why commit to anything before you know what it costs you? We don’t order a pizza without knowing what it costs, so why would someone else book a jet for a quarter million dollars without knowing what it costs?”