Deciding how to travel - via the airlines, company or charter aircraft, or even by driving or taking a train – involves many considerations. While several of the benefits of business aircraft are tangible and measurable, some are challenging to quantify precisely. Progressive management teams routinely consider all the costs and realistically value all the benefits of every travel option before deciding how to go. For business aircraft, those benefits can include saving time and increased productivity among many others, including the following:

• Ensuring Industrial Security – For many companies, the protection of personnel from uncontrolled public exposure alone is justification for business aircraft use. Avoiding eavesdropping, reducing travel visibility, eliminating unwanted and unnecessary conversations and interruptions, all support the use of business aircraft to safeguard company employees and the sensitive information they carry.

• Maximizing Personal Safety and Peace of Mind – Turbine-powered aircraft flown by two-person professional crews have a safety record comparable to or better than scheduled airlines. The peace of mind that results from complete company control over the aircraft flown, passenger and baggage manifests, pilot quality and training, aircraft maintenance, operational safety standards, is substantial. This benefit also can include the rescheduling of flights if weather, mechanical or other considerations suggest it is the appropriate course.

• Exercising Management Control Over Efficient, Reliable Scheduling – The near-total scheduling flexibility inherent in business aircraft – even changing itineraries enroute – can be a powerful asset. As aircraft can arrive and depart on the passenger’s schedule, typically waiting for them in the ordinary course of business, meetings can be moved up, back or extended without penalty, risk or unnecessary scheduling pressures. Overnight trips also can be avoided. If managed proactively, this benefit can improve business results.

• Projecting a Positive Corporate Image – For customers particularly, and often for vendors, the arrival and departure of company employees via business aircraft is the sign of a well-run company, signaling the progressive nature of an organization with a keen interest in efficient time management and high levels of productivity. If used for charitable purposes, significant public service contributions, as well as possible public relations benefits also can be realized.

• Attracting and Retaining Key People (Customers Included) – The right person in the right place at the right time can change everything. Finding and keeping those people can hinge on many factors, including the ability to maintain reasonable travel schedules, maximizing personal productivity and assuring family time. Holding on to valuable employees can also prevent companies from spending time and resources on training replacement employees.

• Reducing Post-Trip Fatigue/increasing Post-Trip Productivity – Schedules that require late night travel, or longer than necessary trips, often result in post-trip fatigue, damaging productivity in the day(s) after the trip. Because they can facilitate more efficient scheduling, business aircraft can minimize this loss.

• Optimizing Payroll – Under “rightsizing” initiatives, many organizations have rediscovered the need to maximize the productivity of the same or fewer employees to accomplish equal or greater amounts of work and ensure their competitive position and long-term success. As business aircraft improve employee time management and efficiency, they can help eliminate the need for additional personnel, reducing payroll costs, and help maximize a company’s competitive market advantage.

• Truncating Cycle Times – The compound effect of increased productivity and saved travel time is that more can be accomplished in less time. Consequently, many companies attribute reductions in “cycle times” – when facilities are brought on-line sooner and projects finished faster – to business aircraft use. Although challenging to quantify or attribute entirely to business aircraft use, this benefit often can be substantial.

• Charging the Entrepreneurial Spirit – By minimizing or eliminating many of the barriers to travel, business aircraft allow business opportunities to be more readily considered and acted upon. Business cultures and their strategies change as markets, facilities, and customers in other, often-rural areas of the country – once practically unreachable and thus unconsidered – are newly accessible.