Private Jet
Have heard anecdotally that some sponsors have private jets they use for site visits, board meetings, etc. — is this true?
Drop some cool stories below
Trending Content - Private Equity Forum
| +89 | Nothing to do at work & bored to hell | 9 | 14h |
| +67 | Do people over-index on 'moats' | 22 | 6h |
| +52 | Predicted Net Worth in Trodden Finance Path by 60? | 20 | 14h |
| +44 | Biggest (avoidable) failures in PE Investments? | 25 | 8h |
| +38 | Why is ROIC never really a topic when looking at companies IRL | 11 | 4d |
| +22 | What do you think of PE Value Creation Careers in 2026? | 5 | 2h |
| +19 | Senior IR Lifestyle | 3 | 5d |
| +12 | NY LMM PE Recruiting | 3 | 1d |
| +12 | Honest opinions needed about lateraling | 4 | 2d |
| +12 | How to approach Buyside Recruiting | 3 | 5d |
Career Resources
What time is your flight home - "We flew air-[firm name]"
Its honestly just a convenience and sometimes it sucks because it just means you get no break - at least when you fly commercial you might have the chance to be left alone for a couple hours. Often times its pretty cool - particularly when its a deal you are looking at with one of your port-cos and you stop to pick up the management team on the way to the MP they are looking at acquiring/merging with. I have some friends where the below is essentially the conversation though:
Private equity associate: "Can I go on the private jet with you guys this weekend?"
Private equity managing director: "I'm sorry, but the private jet is reserved for partners, senior associates and up only. Maybe next time."
Private equity associate: "But I'm a senior associate!"
Private equity managing director: "Yes, but you're a senior associate in training. You have to earn your wings before you can fly on the private jet."
Private equity associate: "Well, can I at least ride in the luggage compartment?"
Private equity managing director: "I'm sorry, but the luggage compartment is reserved for our carry-on bags only. You'll have to take the commercial flight like everyone else." (or stay home entirely)
My firm flys economy so this sounds way better. Remember not to take MM over that MF job kids!
Hi! Sorry if this is a silly question.But what do the MM and MF acronyms mean?
Middle Market and Mega Fund
It's cool the first few times. I never did for work b/c pandemic and little travel but did about a half dozen times just with a family wheels up subscription. The dean and deluca gummy swedish fish things are a nice touch. So are the windows where you can control the tint. It also feels sick to have a black SUV drive up to a PJ and within a minute of landing you're in the car going where you need to go. But more than anything it's convenient and then the cool factor wears off. Plus my family realized it was not worth it at all to be spending, purely a "we just got to an insane bracket so this feels like a thing we should do" which leads me to believe that for almost no one is it an actually prude time/value tradeoff to purchase a wheels up subscription. It's also sick to not fly out of the main airports. I flew out of Teterboro which to me was like wtf is this airport until realizing a ton of it is just small private aircraft. No specific cool stories I guess but overall it's a one thumbs up experience. I get the sense that it was way cooler in my mind before I did it, and then once you do it it's cool, but after that it's kind of like meh it's just a thing you can do. Kind of like Michelin dining after a while. You do enough of it and then it's like meh well once I've been to Blue Hill Stone Barns it's going to be pretty hard to top that (or insert your personal favorite Michelin restaurant, the point is not to harp on my specific restaurant choice).
Hope this is illuminating. Realize this is a very fortunate position to be in. Just my attempt to give a candid reflection since you asked for any stories.
I would absolutely love to be in the position where I get jaded from private air travel.
Even on a forum that slants disproportionately to high income folks this is a stark reminder of the levels of wealth that exist. Lmfao. Jaded from private flights and eating at the worlds finest restaurants.
My firm has two. Mostly just convenient when you’re flying to bumblefuck, USA on a weekly basis for portco work and management presentations. Really nice to be able to make almost any trip a day trip so you’re home sleeping in your own bed. Also cool to drive right up to the jet and come back to your car ready to go as soon as you land.
Biggest downsides for me are not accumulating airline status to use for personal travel and having to be “on” the whole time since you’re sitting right next to or across your boss the entire flight (i.e., no taking a nap or goofing off and watching a movie or something which is one of the great pleasures of flying IMO). It’s also comically expensive. No idea how the economics shake out (e.g., fixed vs fuel costs) but we regularly bill portfolio companies $20k+ per trip.
Something that I’ve experienced, but what are the optics of showing up in a private jet to a portfolio company that operates a business in the middle of nowhere w/ majority blue collar workers? It’s also a weird dynamic if your portco is in the gutter from a performance standpoint and here are these big PE guys / gals flying around in a PJ b/c they don’t want to sleep at anything less than a 5 star hotel. I’m all for nice things and flying private, but i can see how it would be viewed poorly by the portco management teams / employees as well. Any thoughts?
I assume you just don’t bring up or mention the PJ if those issues you mentioned are prevalent. Just a guess though.
The optics are bad.
This is a very real concern. You have to not talk about it or avoid the subject. One time we went to visit a facility in the Mid West and you could see the FBO from the windows of the factory. We specifically moved the PJ to a place where it was not noticeable.
Meh we wouldn’t really care about optics. Of course don’t brag about it but if anyone asked, we wouldn’t make up an elaborate story or go out of our way to hide that we flew in private. I can’t think of a situation where it ever rubbed someone the wrong way.
Obviously if it was a portco situation where cash was tight or we were letting people go we’d either fly commercial or not charge the company for the jet.
Curious to those who do fly private for work, what type of fund are you at?
From my / friends experience, seems like the days of flying private at a UMM/MF are largely over given optics (with the exception of senior leadership), know my UMM used to do it tons for example but now has policies against it except for extreme needs.
My perception is that it’s the kind of things that’s now reserved for the upper echelon of MM funds (successful funds with enough $ to justify but small enough to not worry about public scrutiny) but curious if I’m off base there
I think this is exactly on point. Everyone has money to fly private, but they don’t because there is an optics issue and most of the time, it’s not that different. I must say it was definitely something to show off to non-finance friends, but that’s a one time thing and you quickly realize no one cares. It’s an experience I would have like to have once or twice. I travel fairly frequently for work and I’m almost 100% of the time first class so it beats the few experiences I’ve had flying private.
I'm cheap on business travels. Short trips, I'll take extra leg room. >4hrs, I'll do business.
Flying private is cool, but only if I'm doing the flying. Hobby jet ratings are costly.
I echo the other people who said it was cool at first but the novelty wears off. The convenience is the main factor. If I'm traveling between two major cities and there's a lot of non-stop commercial flight options, flying private doesn't add as much and I echo the others on how you don't get to de-compress sitting next to / across from your boss or portco the entire time. And unless you're on a really big jet, it feels much more claustrophobic to me. I start to feel the walls close in for any PJ flight that is longer than 2-2.5 hours.
Flying to a less convenient city is a different matter. The commercial flight trips where you have to lay over with 2 hours in between flights is what really kills those travel days. Being able to hop on and off without delay and be home quickly is where it starts to become more worth it.
I was doing some flight lessons a few months ago in a Cessna 172 when Paul Tudor Jones took off in front of me in his big ass jet. Kind of cool.
What's always funny to me is when rich folks try to justify the private jet on efficiency grounds.
When I worked on a MM PE deal, about 20% of the shops who came to see the asset chartered a flight. The asset was near a major airport and basically all the firms (whether commercial or charter) were in New York, so there wasn't any logic to why this small group felt the need to charter.
The family office where I currently work doesn't have or lease a jet. But the itch is palpable. They buy a lot of Wheels Up credits to get better status with Delta, and they do a lot of JSX/Aero/Blade which to me are just commercial airlines that superficially feel exclusive. These are for people who want to brag to their friends that they "flew private", its honestly pathetic and hilarious all at the same time. Just fly first class.
100% agree. People just need to own up to the fact that it’s a signaling effect. A layover isn’t going to kill anyone…..
I just had a 100% innocuous comment removed by the mod team. I just talked about a deal where some of the PE firms flew private (zero identifying details were provided), and the fact that my current shop, a family office, humorously dances around the issue by using the semi-private services like Aero and JSX and Blade. WTF guys. The censorship stuff is super weird.
[Edit: and now it’s back]
this:
https://johnlefevre.medium.com/the-roadshow-aka-the-worst-private-plane…
My UMM firm would use it for meetings / site visits in rural locations (where it would take basically the whole day to get there if we flew commercially), if we were on a sprint of a process and needed to maximize time or if it meant the difference between having to stay the night somewhere to make an early morning meeting. The general unspoken rule was that we would not talk about how we got to the meeting in front of others because of the optics.
To echo the points above, it is very cool the first few times, but once you realize it means you lose any of the breaks you get during travel (your entire deal team is sitting facing each other, so it always turns into a meeting / working session), the novelty wears off. You also lose mile accumulation you get when flying commercial which I think is the only real perk of having to travel for work
Was working at an LP back in the day and H&F came to visit while fundraising. Our group head asked something like "what time is your flight back?" and the guy was like "hmm IDK yet we might grab dinner in town first then head back" and it was mildly amusing.
Somewhat off-topic, but could you explain a bit about how you transitioned from an Lp to a GP? Interested in making a similar move one day and would be helpful to hear how you did it. Did you jump to a fund your previous firm was invested in? And did you have IB experience prior to joining the Lp? Thanks in advance!
My firm charters a private jet and I’ve heard it’s terrifying and the turbulence is unbearable.
There’s a MM PE firm whose PJ somewhat famously crashed at Teterboro years ago (everyone survived). Wild stories though… I heard about it from a few juniors at a networking session a few years ago, and didn’t believe it until I Googled.
Unless you fly private all the time, it's annoying to fly only occasionally at the more junior levels since 1) you're stuck right next to your seniors and often doing live work, 2) don't accrue as much points for status.
Facilis laborum voluptatem atque nam fugit. Similique ipsa beatae est nemo vel.
Velit aut non enim. Distinctio aliquam porro culpa. Consectetur voluptas fugit laboriosam dolorum voluptatum ut hic. Dicta non quam maxime. Et provident quibusdam in magni delectus illum. Ea qui magnam fugiat. Aut sed dolor dolores ut magnam animi.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Dolorem eligendi minus atque eveniet. Et voluptatem quis et cupiditate praesentium facilis. Omnis delectus tempora aut reprehenderit.