For The Private Jet Owner with Everything; Anti-Missile Device Is Here

With the growing threat of International Terrorism it makes sense to keep the movers and shakers and key-executives safe. Well for the private jet owner or fractional jet company which wants to gain respect or win friends and influence people, perhaps you should get an anti-surface-air-missile device to save your butt and / or your expensive friends from some lunatic fringe Islamic Radical fundamentalist International Terrorist?

As a very expensive, but quite worthy option; Business Jets can now come with a surface to air missile warning system. And a device to take out an incoming missile, just like what the US military has for its close air-support aircraft and cargo planes which have to go into hostile areas of known International Terrorists, Insurgents or enemy territories.

How much does this cool device cost? Well it will set you back a bit. In fact you can probably buy a good used private jet for about the same price. It costs about 3.5 million and you will not see it on just any biz jet, but Gulfstream offers the AN / ALQ-204 Matador by Sanders and is mounted in the tail cone.

So who can afford it? A Saudi Prince, head of state, military, corporate multi-national conglomerate CEO or of course on the dark side, an arms dealer or big time a drug dealer. The system fits in the tail cone. Make sure it is turned off when you wash it though, as the operations manual states clearly. Consider all this in 2006.

Eight-Tracks, Private Jets, One Man, And The Rise Of Car Audio

At the end of World War One, the car and the radio were rarely thought of together. However, as broadcasting took hold in the early 20’s, enterprising drivers began to install home radios in their cars, creating the first rudimentary car audio. Unfortunately, there was so much interference from the car’s electrical system that they could only be used with the engine off, and the situation remained there throughout the remainder of the 1920’s.

A former US Naval radio operator with an eighth-grade education, William Lear, was running a radio shop in Quincy, Missouri in 1929. Always tinkering, he and employee Elmer Wavering began to experiment with a radio that could work while a vehicle was running . With temperature variations, road vibrations, and electrical interference to account for, it was no easy task.

Once they had a working prototype, they set off for a radio convention in Chicago, where they met manufacturer Bill Galvin. After they successfully installed a radio in his Studebaker, legend has it he set off in the automobile for the 1930 Radio Manufacturer’s Association Convention in Atlantic City, NJ.

Too short on funds to buy entry to the convention and set up a booth, he instead parked outside and turned up the radio. He was soon able to secure enough orders to allow the company to move forward with the first radio for use in a moving vehicle called the “Motorola.”

William Lear didn’t stay with the new company long. Wavering remained, helping to develop the first massed-produced alternator and eventually becoming president of the company. But Lear had his sights set a little higher. In 1931, he bought his first airplane, a Fleet Biplane.

The problems he encountered while flying led him to found Lear Developments, combining his love of flying with his love of radio. There, he produced radio direction finders, the first radio compass, and even autopilot systems, eventually receiving awards from the City of Paris and President Truman for his work in improving aviation safety.

It wasn’t until 1963 that he began to develop and build the first mass-produced business jet, the Learjet 23. Though Lear Developments had long made radio systems for both general and military aviation, here again, William Lear answered the challenge of bringing music to a moving vehicle. At 500 miles an hour, commercial radio signals would be left far behind almost as soon as they were picked up.

With an eye toward the car market, the company developed the Lear Jet Stereo eight-track cartridge, making 100 prototypes for RCA and Automobile executives. Together with Motorola, RCA, Ford, and General Motors, Lear formed a consortium to standardize and distribute the new format, and by the late 1960’s, car audio had entered a new age where drivers were finally able to select their own music.

And if they were fortunate enough to own a Learjet, they could take the tape and play it on the plane. In Lear’s words, “Tape playback in automobiles is going to be the next big thing. I’m going to be in the position of a man with a boat full of life jackets following a ship he knows is going to sink. t have any trouble selling them. ” Car audio would never be the same.

Leasing Versus Buying a Private Jet

As drivers of BMWs, Mercedes, and other luxury cars know, sometimes leasing makes more sense than buying. As an aircraft broker dealing in private jet sales, our company has clients driving leased cars, and over the years several have asked about the advisability of leasing a private jet instead of buying one. The fact is that leasing a private jet for some clients can indeed provide advantages over purchasing one..

It can be especially advantageous to a buyer when they find a private jet on sale that makes an ideal short-term solution for their private jet travel needs. They can lease the jet for a couple of years, their reasoning goes, and then buy the private jet of their dreams later. But a recent potential lease situation our company was involved in recently highlights some of the issues in the “buy vs. lease” comparison.

The situation: A couple of months ago I had a request from the head of state of an African nation wanting to lease a Gulfstream G650, and we located an owner with an early delivery position willing to enter into a lease. (The G650, after all, isn’t even in service yet.) The proposed deal: The lessee (the party leasing the aircraft) wanted a two-year term and was willing to pay in advance – not in monthly payments, as most leases stipulate.

The aircraft owner, who had financed the G650 purchase through his bank, went to his lenders to seal the deal, and of course our team was in touch with the lender as well. The upshot: The bank refused to approve the lease, regardless if the money was paid upfront or not.

The bank was concerned that once the aircraft was in the service of the head of a foreign state, there would be no way to place a lien on the jet or recover it in the event of a dispute over the aircraft or lease agreement, or if the jet wasn’t returned at the end of the lease period.

My point is not that it may be difficult to lease a private jet if you’re the head of a foreign state. Instead, what was interesting to my team as we discussed the leases with the lenders who had financed the G650, was how concerned banks had become about the creditworthiness of lessees. We know banks have been much more diligent about checking the financials of private jet buyers since the meltdown of 2008, but lease agreements previously didn’t get the same high level of attention.

After all, the jet could be recovered if the lessee got behind in lease payments, and the aircraft owner would still be responsible to the bank for the lease payments. That has now changed, and this is important because the primary advantage of leasing a private jet is that it typically costs less money per month than buying the same jet. (Of course, with a lease you walk-away and get nothing when the term is up; when buying you own the jet when the loan is paid off.)

If your cash flow situation is such that you can afford to lease but not to buy, a bank that holds the note on the jet, or the financial advisor to the aircraft owner, might not approve of the lease deal in the first place.

And for those who do have the financial wherewithal to either buy or lease, the extra paperwork and credit approvals required for a lease today might dowse negotiations before they get very far. In short, there are fewer leasing opportunities in the private jet market today, despite the number of creditworthy shoppers and the surfeit of used private jets for sale that might have an easier shot at being leased than purchased.

That said, in the interest of balanced discussion, let’s discuss some of the benefits of leasing beyond its relative costs. First, leasing eliminates concerns about residual aircraft value. Anyone who bought a private jet before the economic downturn in 2008 has likely seen the value of their investment drop substantially. With leasing, you walk away from the jet when your agreement is over with no concern about aircraft depreciation and current valuation.