Private jet breaks speed record
Swiss pilot Riccardo Mortara has set a new speed record for flying around the world on a Sabreliner 65 private jet, flying over 20,000 nautical miles in 58 hours. This new record defeated Steve Fosset’s previous 2006 record of 67 hours and one minute. Mortara departed from Geneva on Friday to Bahrain, Colombo, Macau, Osaka, Petropavlovsk, Anchorage, Las Vegas and Montreal, before the plane was diverted to Iceland due to volcanic activity. He returned on Sunday. Congratulations to Richard and his crew.
However I wonder if this flight has helped promote the private jet industry. With environmental issues always close to the top of the news agenda, some may say that flying an empty private jet around the world portrays the wrong environmental image for our industry.
Aviation as an industry obviously doesn’t sit easily within a green agenda. Major commercial airlines including British Airways and Virgin have made major advances in biofuel development over recent years but implementing its widespread usage would come at a huge price: The amount of fuel required by commercial airlines is massive and, given the process of creating biofuel, would result in a major increase in global food prices.
Private aviation, by comparison, uses much lower fuel volumes overall (although obviously the fuel burn per passenger is much greater). What’s more the typical private jet user is also a good target for green messages. The guilt and negative press attention that often surrounds private jet usage by the rich and famous means they would probably be very open to developments that mitigate their carbon footprint – even if this meant an increase in price. Just look at take-up of the Prius amongst celebrities! So in my view the potential is there for the private jet industry to take the lead on looking at biofuels.
And going back to Riccardo’s amazing achievement, perhaps we, as an industry, should encourage records to be set and dictated by green technology eg the lowest fuel burn from Geneva to Paris in a 4 seat passenger aircraft with a flight time under 60 mins?
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