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Lap of Luxury Win a luxurious holiday to Cape

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November 2, 2008

Afford business class? Hire a private jet A new service claims to provide cut-price CEO-style travel. Stephen Bleach takesoff

Enormous amoun ts of time andmoney are being spent on denyingthat 3-D stinks Kevin Maher

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Stephen Bleach

A low-cost private jet. It just sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

Private jets are for James Bond and Donald Trump. Low-cost

airlines are for deal-hungry cheapskates like you and me. To putthe two together is like a fashion tie-up between Chanel and

Primark. It goes against the God-given order of things.

New outfit Blink is having none of that. Launched quietly this

summer, it claims to be Europe’s first low-cost pr ivate-jet airline.

Low-cost is, of course, a relative concept. A return on its

four-seater planes from London to Paris costs £500pp. You couldgo backwards and forwards 10 times on Ryanair for that and still

have enough left for a counselling session afterwards.

The service is aimed at execsdownsizing for the depression - it’sabout half what you’d pay for a

regular private-jet trip, and only a

notch above British Air-ways clubclass - but humbler travellers are

getting in on the act. “About 30%

of our customers have beenleisure travellers,” says Blink’s

co-founder Cameron Ogden.

“Many save up and hire a jet for a

special occasion, birthday treats

and so on.”

Fine, but what’s it like? For twogrand, you want flash: there’s no

point splashing out on a private jet

if it’s going to be as cramped and

tatty as your standard CheapoAir job. Somebody would have to try it

out.

Strictly speaking, I didn’t have a

family occasion to justify it, but Ihadn’t bought my mum a meal

since 1998. St Malo for lunch on

Saturday, then? “That would bevery nice,” she said.

The difference from ordinary flying

starts the moment you phone up to

book. “What time do we need tocheck in?” I asked the nice girl in

the Blink office. “I’m afraid you’ll

need to arrive a full 10 minutesbefore takeoff,” she said

apologetically. “And what time istakeoff?” I asked. “What timewould you like it to be?” came the

answer.

Blink’s main home-counties base is

Farnborough. Dozens of private

jets call this home, and the wholeplace is discreetly chic, with its

futuristic aluminium hangars and

shiny little terminal. I parked mybattered old Corsa between a

Maserati and a Merc, and we

“Ah, Mr and Mrs Bleach. They’re

just fuelling your plane,” said the

receptionist. “A couple of minutes,I think. I’ll call the captain, he’ll be

right with you.” You don’t get this

on Ryanair, do you? There, if thecaptain wants to see you, it means

you’ve done something very, very

wrong. Andrew Collicott, on theother hand, just wanted to escort

us the 30 yards across the tarmac

Mark Frary, Business Travel

Editor

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to our waiting conveyance. Er...customs? Passport control? “We’ll

take them as read, shall we?”

Blink flies the Cessna Citation Mustang very light jet. It’s cute:

dinky, curvy, rather lovable, in a Mini Cooper sort of way, and this

one’s just three months old. Go up the three steps and you’ve gotthe pilot’s console on your left, the passenger seats on your right

- all four of them. “Ooh, isn’t it sweet !” says Mum, settling into her

seat.

Takeoff is smooth and fast, the interior is comfy and blessedlyquiet, and while there’s no cabin crew, there’s plenty of wine in

the cooler. Which we made good use of. You can see rightthrough to the cockpit, where a vast screen shows a map with

dozens of brightly coloured lines all over it. Time to show off toMum.

Page 1 of 2

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