privateJet
Latest
Private airport terminal for Google's jets approved by city of San Jose
After a minor curfew scuffle, it looks like Google might soon take its airplanes from their current nest at Mountain View's Moffett field and park them up the road at Mineta San Jose International Airport. Signature Flight Support has been approved by the city's council to build an $82 million facility on the west side of that field, where its biggest client would be Google's flight operator, Blue City Holdings. Councilmen approved the facility by a 10-1 vote after Signature accepted a deal for immunity from some of the stricter measures of a night flying curfew, like eviction. Google's offer to do a $45 million renovation of Hanger One at its current Moffett Field home in Mountain View was rejected by the feds, meaning the search giant's likely to take its ball, bat and fleet of jets to San Jose sometime in 2015. [Image credit: Mineta San Jose International Airport]
Steve's private jet is back in the air
Steve Jobs is flying again. Literally. Last April the Wall Street Journal freaked out a bit when they went through Apple's SEC reports and saw that Apple only reimbursed Steve Jobs for US$4000 in flight expenses for his private Gulfstream V jet from July to December 2008.The $4000 reimbursement was a paltry sum compared to the $580,000 Steve was reimbursed for travel on his jet during the January to June 2008 period. The $4000 reimbursement was due to several reasons, notably Jobs being sick, but also because he didn't need to fly all over the world closing iPhone 3G deals with international carriers. For those that see Jobs' Gulfstream expenses as directly "integral to negotiations with international carriers and supply chain partners," you'll be happy to hear that Jobs has racked up $127,000 in Gulfstream expenses from January to March of this year, according to Apple most recent SEC filing. So why is Jobs flying all around on Apple business again? We know he was in New York several times to talk to publishers about putting their content on the iPad, beyond that, it's anyone's guess.
QSST, new supersonic jet, will travel coast-to-coast in two hours
Many of us here at Engadget are, or at least wish we were, the jetsetting type. The type to constantly bounce around to Boston, San Francisco, Hong Kong and other exotic locales. We'd definitely appreciate being able to traverse the continent in two hours, and while our overloads, erm, friendly bosses might appreciate that, our accounting department probably wouldn't. And surely this new generation of supersonic flights, which will reach top speeds of Mach 1.8, aren't going to come cheap. According to Wired News, this new supersonic private jet, called QSST ("quiet supersonic travel") is in production by Lockheed Martin. The new jet sports a "patented inverted V-tail", which will reduce the sound of its sonic boom to less than a hundredth of the original Concorde, one of the reasons why it was met with limited success in the US. The QSST's current price tag of $80 million is still cheap by comparison to the first generation of Concorde jets, which cost $46 million in 1977 (nearly $150 million in 2005 dollars when adjusted for inflation). So save your pennies, kids, we'll be saving ours.
