Private Plane Owners

This is why several renowned performers, singers and businessmen own their own aircraft.

Several of these affluent celebrities own several of their own private aircraft, and some celebrity private aircraft owners even received pilots' licences to operate their own aircraft. "Jimmy Buffett" has his pilot's licence and has a Hemisphere Dancer, a Grumman Albatross and a Grumman Goose floatplane.

Warren Buffett, a business aviation tycoon (and colleague Buffet), is the owner of a Gulfstream IV SP businessjet, which comes as no big shock. Who of these prominent private planes would you most like to pilot?

Ultrahigh-rich men are flying privately - here's where they're going.

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Even a millionaire like me wants to fill the gap in private aircraft taxes.

Privately owned jets - which have been filling politicians' bags with generously donated money for years - are paying in comparison to what business travellers are paying in government duties. According to a recent study by the Protestant think tanks Institute for Policy Studies, for example, business travellers are paying a range of duties and charges on their airline ticketing, from the 7.5% federally levied rate to the $4.50 passenger property fee.

Meanwhile, private and business aircraft owners are paying only $0.218 per gal on kerosene or $0.193 per gal on petrol. In spite of our combined dependence on crucial assets such as the air traffic control system (ATC), business carriers still contribute 95% of all applicable airline income to the Federal Aviation Administration's fiduciary funds, a total of $14.85 billion of the $15 billion recovered last year.

Meanwhile, private and business aircraft consume 15.6% of ATC assets, but contribute only 1.55% of all tax to the Trustee Funds. Indeed, periodic airliners subsidize private planes with more than a billion dollars per year. According to a Bloomberg check, a private plane chief executive officer will be paying only $525 in tax on fuels, while business travellers on the same flight would be on the take for $3,900.

This is because the private plane is only subject to the petrol duty, while the scheduled plane has to bear the petrol duty, passengers' duty, consumption duty and other duties and charges. Until they both arrive, the private aircraft owners owed 87% less for the same overland trip.

Privately owned aircraft still levy a tithe of aircraft tax even though they fly the same itineraries.