Why should a company go for a multimillion-dollar business jet? Isn’t it a white elephant or will it actually bring more, in results? If so, how?

Recent studies suggest that the use of business aircraft can increase time available to business travelers by at least 40 percent.

That is an impressive figure because the 40 percent can translate to:

• Another two weeks to the company’s business calendar.

• Add another mover and shaker to the top marketing and management team.

• Take wasted hours, week in and week out, and convert them to some of the best.

Does those advantages justify an investment of nearly $40 million in an ultra long-range corporate aircraft?

The answer seems to be an emphatic ‘yes’ for the world’s largest and fastest growing companies.

As for Middle East players there are compelling reasons, both financial and professional, that positively impact on the purchase of a company aircraft.

The usual refrain is that investing on business aircraft does not justify the ‘cost’.

True, but ‘cost’ is not the only issue. Strategic results also count.

So, why not have your own business jets to fly out executives to these remote and far-flung locations? A logic none will refute.

The story goes that not long ago the chairman of a multi-billion dollar company was asked why he invested company capital in long-range business aircraft when the airlines are cheaper.

He responded, citing a recent situation.

His company’s corporate jet carried the senior marketing team to South America to probe potential new markets.

Preliminary meetings with one organization went extremely well. So well, in fact, the on-site marketing executives arranged to fly the representatives from the group back with them on the company jet for a tour of their US facilities and a meeting with the chairman.

The outcome was a five-year exclusive agreement worth hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues!

The deal took less than five weeks to accomplish and there was no way competitors could pre-empt access to this new, very lucrative market. “If that airplane doesn’t fly again for the rest of the year, it has more than paid for itself,” was how the chairman put it to the questioner.

Two key points emerge:

• The economics of ultra long-range business aircraft use have much more to do with leveraged results than reducing travel costs. These results are usually measured in new or preserved revenues and profits.

• A business aircraft makes it easier to put the right people face to face.

• It can be the difference between ‘being’ there, or not.

• With senior people doing business together the deal is more apt to get done and be of a higher dollar value.

But then, use of business aircraft as a marketing and management tool is a well-proven tactic by now. It breaks the psychological barrier that ‘force’ many business executives avoid or delay trips. Those delayed and avoided trips fall right off the bottom-line.

The crux of the matter is that there can be no substitute to people to people interactions and senior executives, key persons in key positions in global companies, live stressed lives under tremendous time pressure in

their bids to meet the needs of their organizations, shareholders, customers, industry, community, family, and themselves.

There just aren’t enough hours in a day or a week to live life slow, relatively slow.

The biggest ‘time’ frustration for executives is airline travel. Many of them have calendars that are managed to the nearest fifteen minutes.

For the harried business traveler airlines rarely match needs. And the airlines’ hub-and-spoke system requires that travelers often endure connecting flights, with the resulting loss of time and increased risk of missed or canceled flights.

Airline travel is stressful — the fight for carry-on baggage space; tight and uncomfortable seating arrangements; no privacy in which to conduct business en route; delays and cancelations that include little information flow and even fewer options.

Many senior executives travel at least once each week. If their trip has only two legs, he or she will travel about 100 legs per year. A business jet, on the other hand, requires at least one hour less per leg.

This includes parking, baggage check-in, security checks, boarding processes, departure delays, en route time, arrival delays, baggage claim and ground transportation.

One hundred hours lost even if in chunks still add up to more than two and one-half weeks of lost productivity for people most crucial to keep a company’ s business thriving.So, the business jet! To avoid all the hassles of airline travel, to be able to reclaim the equivalent of entire weeks of lost or wasted time.

That is the result when an executive can use a business aircraft instead of the airlines.

The quantity and quality frequent traveler productivity has two important aspects:

• En route work environment.

• Length/Distance of flight.

As for the first, surveys indicate that it is at least 40 percent greater on business aircraft. Business executives can work and meet during the trip at their own convenience rather than be at the mercy of disruptions of the commercial airlines’ routines for departure, meal service, and prolonged pre-landing preparations.

In fact, some executives say quality of the work environment on company airplanes is even better than that of their offices!

On board corporate jets there are individual work surfaces, and access to digital phones, computers, facsimile machines, e-mail, and digital audio-video much like back at the office, the advantage being that you can shut it all off and focus uninterrupted on the task at hand. After all, who is going to be able to bother you at 43,000 feet?

Privacy and a discrete working atmosphere are equally important as well.

Airline travel, even in first class, is a public environment that requires discretion. Private discussions on the airlines are easily overheard.

Traveler productivity upon arrival is the other concern for business executive who can’t sleep out the jet lag and then leisurely get on with work but you cannot ignore jet lag.

There is a great deal of data that implicate crossing multiple time zones, long work days and night flights in the impairment of human performance through reduced cognitive capabilities.

And these are not that you carry to a negotiating table, to a critical business meeting, a crucial phase of negotiation that can deliver a company, for example, into or out of the Fortune 500 sheet.

Experts have compared the effects of fatigue to that of hypoxia or alcohol — and all the more dangerous because the person suffering from its effects often unaware of his or her reduced capacity to perform.

An airline traveler might require two to seven days longer than a corporate jet passenger to recover fully from the sleep debt and other physiological effects of a long trip. Companies must find ways to control travel and its impact on its executives. A business jet gives the company that control.

For, remote underdeveloped regions represent some of the greatest opportunities for many companies and business jets fly you to those remote areas quicker, faster and safer.

It has been common for many US companies to prohibit airline travel by their top executives within many countries because of the safety aspect.

Business aircraft has a safety record that is comparable to that of world-class airlines, or better. Additionally, executives can land at many airports that are closer to their destination, greatly reducing surface transportation issues.

Ultimately, for every leading company its greatest resource is its human element. Given this, it is imperative that a company’ s people do not get burned out.

But most top executives put in at least a 50-hour workweek, the hours extending right into the evenings and weekends, many of which are usually away from home.

This impacts on two areas of people’s lives — family and personal time. There can be no more better a feeling than being with your loved ones, sleeping in your own bed, or having a few quiet hours to

rest and reflect.

A business jet gives you back some of those days and hours lost to the airlines.

No wonder then that companies with business jets are the ones every top executive wants to be. For, they are not only competitive, at the top of the list, but also people friendly. Go for that leveraged results riding every business jet.