Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Are Corporate Jets Necessary?

Via Marginal Revolution, there is a defense of business jets in the New York Times opinion page. There’s only one argument I find compelling: there is a very long tail of places which are not served by airlines, and  if your business is in many locations not served by them, private aircraft make sense.

For example, if you’re at Walmart’s headquarters, here are your direct flight options:

NW Arkansas Places

And here are your store locations:

image

The graphic is a still shot from Flowing Data: check out the version which shows the expansion over time:

Walmart

There’s one for Target too:

Target