Bbc News
“When you’re flying private, you’re not faking it,” goes the saying.
If someone is spending tens of millions of dollars on a private jet, you know there has got to be serious money behind them.
But, as aircraft dealer Steve Varsano says: “Don’t forget the extras.”
Once you’ve got the jet, there’s the running costs – the fuel, the pilot, the insurance. “It can add up to thousands of dollars an hour.”
But if you have the cash, London-based Varsano has the aircraft.
He runs the world’s first – and, as far as he knows, still the only – street-level retail showroom dealing in the sale of used and new private jets.
It includes a full-size mock-up of an Airbus ACJ 319 business jet cabin – the real thing costs about $60m (£37m), plus $30m to fit out – filled with all that the discerning private traveller needs: a pop-up video screen, cigar box and bar, sound system, space at the back for a bedroom, a coloured lighting scheme to soften the mood, soft carpet.
While you’re sitting in the luxury leather chairs – $40,000 each, since you ask – you can look through the cabin windows at a video-simulated sky as if you’re flying through the clouds.
The whole place is spotlessly clean and oozing wealth and sophistication. And that’s exactly what Varsano wants when the energy billionaires, corporate chiefs, and celebrities walk through his door.
The Jet Business is at Hyde Park Corner, in a part of London that has become a magnate for the super-rich.
Varsano, pretty wealthy in his own right, lives just around the corner in exclusive Mayfair, with his girlfriend Lisa Tchenguiz, sister of the property tycoons Vincent and Robert Tchenguiz.
Varsano reckons that just about anyone who might be in the market for a private plane eventually passes through central London.
“That’s why I chose the best location in world,” says the New York-born entrepreneur. “If I was trying to sell to these people in their own country, I would be travelling permanently.”
The Jet Business opened two years ago, although Varsano has been in the industry for almost three decades.
For mere mortals, private jets are the ultimate luxury accessory. But Varsano insists that for his clients they are just time machines.
“They want to cut down on dead time. These people might be in the air once, twice a week. It’s about convenience. It’s about getting a deal done – perhaps at some distant airport – and going home,” he says.
So, private jets are just a functional tool, then? “The view that it’s all about flying off on a skiing trip with champagne and girls is just so untrue,” he says.
About 80% of Varsano’s deals are for used jets. New ones can take months to deliver, and he finds that people with serious money to spend tend to want something within weeks.
The showroom has pretty much all they need to make a choice.
Next to the Airbus mock-up is a room with a huge bank of screens running the full length of the wall. This is where prospective clients weigh up their options.
At the touch of an iPad, clients can run through a range of makes and models, prices, age, range, running costs, and view pictures.
A full-scale schematic of the length and height of the aircraft can be brought up on the wall. “You can stand against the screen, or walk the length, and great a real sense of a cabin’s size,” Varsano says.
“I like to let clients just play around with the iPad. It’s an educational tool. Most successful people don’t like asking stupid questions. But in our business most people don’t know what questions to ask.”
Once a client has made a choice, tap the iPad again and a menu of dozens of for-sale aircraft located around the world appears.
All this information is gathered and processed by staff who sit at desks resembling aircraft cock-pits.
“You’ll never find an airplane for sale in the same country as the buyer,” says Varsano. Deals can be complicated.
