Directions

Directions for using the Aircraft versus Airline Calculator

This is a simple tool and not designed to figure every cost and time to the exact minute. Rather, it is designed to provide a high level overview of the amount of time and ultimately the added productivity that using an aircraft versus the airlines might provide in certain circumstances. Therefore, there are certain assumptions and simplifications to make the form easier to use.

Fill in date from drop down menu
Select departure airport. The data base uses airport names and they are sometimes not listed as the common names.
Select arrival airport
Calculator automatically fills in the distance
Flight time is calculated using a typical block speed
Select Mid-size, Large or My Aircraft
If selecting My Aircraft, a drop down for speed will come down and you can input your own block speed in statue miles per hour
Select if overnight required if you flew on airline and you would not need to spend the night on a business aircraft
Select “Next” to go to following page
Input CEO/President, C-Level and Mid-level average annual salary. Calculator calculates the hourly rate.
Select Mid, Large or My Aircraft
Aircraft cost per hour is generic average for this class of aircraft. Selecting My Aircraft you can input your own cost per hour or for card and fractional users, you can input your hourly rate here
Input average overnight expenses if overnight required
Input airline fare, if you need to look up a fare you can select compare rates and be directed to the sky scanner web site. One way fares.
Select “Next” to go to the following page
Enter passenger count for each category
Submit and down load the pdf for your records.

Assumptions

Business Aircraft Productivity Calculator

Assumptions
Direct Flights have a lost time of 2 hours. It is calculated as follows. 1.5 hours for parking, screening, and boarding aircraft. .5 hours for getting off aircraft and getting through terminal. We calculated the taxi times the same as on a business aircraft. Often at larger airports where a business aircraft would use a reliever airport the numbers could be adjusted upward by a minimum of .5 hours.

Any flight that requires a connection is calculated at 3.0 hours. We add one hour for the connection as an average.

Flight productivity factors are taken from the PRC aviation report “Business Aircraft Operations: Financial Benefits and Intangible Advantages” that can be viewed at www.NoPlaneNoGain.org. The assumption is 30’ is non productive time and is reduced from the block flight time. They found from extensive interviews and analysis that passengers are about 50% productive on a business aircraft. Flight time minus 30’ multiplied by 50% gives us the productive hours.

Overnights are figured only when the aircraft could return and the airlines could not get passengers home. The per leg hours for the flight plus the actual flight are added and becomes a benefit to the aircraft. Getting employees home in a timely fashion so they can be fresh at work the following day is important and adds value. An employee riding the airline back the following day is lost productivity which equates to a gain for using the aircraft.

Productivity multipliers per employee levels. The baseline from the PRC report is for certain multipliers based on the level of the employee. We have broken this into three classes. CEO/President, C-level which generally would be that group that is authorized to schedule the aircraft, and mid level managers. We would suggest working with human resources to calculate what they use for return on human
capital.

Salary ranges should be for the group averages.

Overnight per passenger is an average cost for hotel and meals