Business

NetJets’ exec’s exit lifts leasing upstart

The corporate jet dogfight over the skies of the Big Apple is about to be taken up a notch, The Post has learned.

Upstart jet leasing firm XOJet has recently raided rival Warren Buffett’s NetJets and stolen away the billionaire investor’s key New York-area sales executive, who is expected to start trying to woo away his former company’s clients.

Gregg Slow, 39, who for more than 11 years was the NetJet’s local point-person with corporate and celebrity contacts, will become the Brisbane, Calif.,-based XOJet’s head of national accounts and chief of client acquisitions.

An announcement could come as early as this week.

“It’s a feather in the cap of XOJet to steal him from the 800-pound gorilla,” said Dan Jennings, CEO of The Private Jet Co., a leading broker in aviation.

Six-year-old XOJet, which follows a different game plan than NetJets, has grown rapidly in recent years. It owns its fleet of 52 jets — Bombardier Challenger 300s, Citation Xs and Hawker 800XPs — and leases time while NetJets, owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, sells fractional ownership of its jets.

The leasing arrangement requires less upfront costs than fractional ownership, the firm said, and appears to be a better fit for cost-conscious users than NetJets.

The privately held company reported a 55 percent growth in flight hours in the first six months of 2012 from the year-earlier period, with annual estimated revenue of $325 million.

By contrast, the number of revenue hours flown by NetJets’ fleet of more than 700 planes in 2011 was flat compared to 2010. Business was hurt badly by the 2008-2009 recession, forcing a $676 million writedown in 2010 after it sold off 20 percent of its fleet.

The hassle of commercial flying also appears to be pushing better-heeled flyers straight to XOJet. A flight of a 10-passenger XOJet plane between New York and Los Angeles costs about $22,000 one way, or $2,200 per person, compared with $1,500 for a first-class ticket on a commercial carrier.

NetJets didn’t return calls for comment.