Which luxury jets took the elite to Davos for this year’s World Economic Forum?
About 1,500 private jets, costing from US$60 million each, are reportedly carrying attendees to and from the conference, which ends on Friday
This week’s 2019 World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland – which ends on Friday – has seen world's business and political leaders descend on the Alpine town after flying to nearby airports in an armada of private jets.
The Air Charter Service, the international private-jet leasing company, said about 1,500 private jets would be taking attendees to and from the conference.
The total was an increase on the 1,300 private jets that serviced the WEF in 2018.
“The global interest in the event led us to analyse the private jet activity over the past five years of WEF,” Andy Christie, private jet director at the leasing company, said.
“Davos doesn’t have its own airfield and, whilst we have several clients who fly into the town by helicopter, the four main airfields used by private jet users attending the forum are Zurich, Dubendorf, St Gallen-Altenrhein, and St Moritz.”
However, Oliver Cann, the head of strategic communications at the WEF, disagreed with the leasing company’s figures and said in a post on the organisation’s website that it expected the private-jet traffic for this year’s event to drop by 14 per cent compared with 2018.
While the leasing company’s figures used data from four airports, the WEF projection was based only on traffic data from Zurich and St Gallen-Altenrhein airports.
Christie said the most popular aircraft in use today are the Gulfstream GV and Bombardier Global Express jets.
These are both large, ultra-long-range private jets, which typically each cost more than US$60 million.