Behold the World’s Most Decadent, Over-the-Top Corporate Jet
Designed to relieve congestion at big-city airports, the A380 boasts 50 percent more floor space than the Boeing 747. “Really, what we do is sell real estate,” says Chris Jones, VP of marketing for Airbus Americas. “We’ve sold one corporate A380 to date. We don’t anticipate it will be our last.”
by Robert Goyer
Last fall, when Airbus announced that it had sold a private version of its behemoth flying flagship, the A380, it was hailed as a major accomplishment. As most executives can attest, there are not many products for which a single sale constitutes a success. But the A380, unapologetically dubbed “The Flying Palace” by Airbus, is one of them. Consider that its base price is around $350 million (that’s bare-bones, green, sans interior), and you begin to understand why.
Insanely expensive company jet, anyone?
Indeed, Airbus is hardly new to the business of making over its commercial airliners into private or business liners. Just last year it celebrated its hundredth sale of a corporate Airbus airplane — though most of those sales have been of the A319, a 737-sized plane. Still, when the cheapest plane in your catalog costs around $40 million, 100 of them represents a decent business. As Airbus COO John Leahy noted upon the sale of the first A380, the company’s success in the corporate aircraft market now “extends from the smallest aircraft, the A318 Elite, all the way up to the largest, the A380 Flying Palace.” Feeling Palace envy? Care to make your company the plane’s second private buyer? You might want to kick the tires first.
For starters, bear in mind that the A380 is big. Really, really big. Designed to achieve economies of scale by carrying substantial passenger loads (it began flying commercially with Singapore Airlines in the fall of 2007), it is both the world’s largest airliner and the world’s biggest private plane, capable of ferrying more than 800 people in all-economy-class seating. Unlike the 747, which has a partial upper deck, the A380 is also a true double-decker, with the upper level running the full length of the fuselage. In terms of weight, despite being built in part from weight-saving composites, the A380 is the heaviest commercial production airplane in the world, with a maximum takeoff weight in excess of 1.2 million pounds, more than 13 times the weight of a Gulfstream G550, one of the largest purpose-built private jets.
Inside, the A380 is an unmatched aerial canvas on which to create interior spaces — or one hell of an executive washroom. With more than 6,000 square feet of floor space on two floors, your options are thereby limitless and ridiculous: Outfit it with a few hundred first-class sleepers for your entire traveling delegation; give each of your top 20 executives their own 300-square-foot flying offices; install racquetball courts and a high-altitude gym to train for all those brutal multinational corporate battles. (Or, if you’re the Google guys, just hang a few hundred hammocks around and call it a day.) More traditional combinations include luxurious living areas, meeting rooms, gourmet kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, satellite televisions, high-speed Internet and networked computer systems.
Despite this immense size, the A380 is still fast and remarkably efficient. It boasts a cruise speed of Mach .85, which is competitive with all but the fastest airliners half its size, allowing it to travel great distances without having to slow down to save fuel. Better yet, because the A380’s four-engine design puts half of the thrust (and half of the noise) well out on the wing, it boasts a supremely quiet cabin.
Given all this, it’s hardly surprising that that first A380 customer was none other than prince, Saudi financier, investor and philanthropist Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud — a.k.a. Prince Al-Walid. He’s legendarily loaded. He’s also scheduled to take delivery of his plane from Airbus in about two years, though it will likely be another couple of years before he can fly it, as the process of turning a bare-interior airplane into a royal retreat doesn’t happen in one Arabian night. The interior work, being conceived by high- end design firm Edése Doret, is estimated to eventually cost $150 million to $250 million, making the finished product at least a half-billion-dollar aircraft. Then again, there is a downside to all this airborne splendor, one that Prince Al (and you, should your company follow in his jetstream) will have to face: Once you reach your destination, be it New York, Paris or Dubai, it might be hard to find ground accommodations that measure up to the airplane in which you just arrived.