For many Americans, a golden age of air travel is dawning.
No, not for the legions of leisure travelers whose summer memories are likely to be peppered with delays, cramped cabins and unruly passengers, but for business travelers.
For these lucky fliers, technology — both in terms of apps and Web sites that make it easier to locate free corporate jets and wizardry in the planes themselves that make them less expensive to buy and fly — means flying commercial a lot less often.
Companies like Knoxville, Tenn.-based JetCharters.com, which links travelers looking to get somewhere fast with plane owners with excess capacity, are able to offer business clients flights on corporate jets for a price equal to or less than that of commercial flights.
Business is up 61 percent through the first eight months of the year at JetCharters compared to last year, according to Robert Hart, the company’s president.
Hart offers customers a quick and easy ride on a three-passenger Cirrus SR22 for $650 an hour, or $1,300 for the two-hour flight to Charleston, SC.
Currently, the cheapest commercial flight, with a stop in Charlotee, NC, is US Airways Flight 4625 — at $413 per person.
So flying three people on a corporate jet, with no airport security lines and no two-hour pre-flight arrival needed, costs just $60 more.
While the public’s image of someone flying in a corporate jet is more fat cat than small fry, Hart said only 3 percent of US business aircraft are flown by Fortune 500 companies.
What’s more, those who account for the remaining 97 percent tend not to be top executives but rather mid-level employees, he said.