One of the sales pitches often heard in support of private aircraft travel, whether its about user fees, the environment or the state of the airlines, is that business aircraft can use most of the 5,000 public-use airports outside the main hubs, thus lessening pressure on the system. Well if Flight Options has done its homework properly (and we suspect it has) then the average business-jet mission is more likely to include stacking up with the big iron than shooting a GPS approach in the heartland. The company recently released its top ten business destinations for private jet travel and it reads like an atlas of the countrys most congested airspace.
It comes as no surprise that New York tops the list, with twice as many legs flown as Los Angeles, which came second. The rest are, in order, Chicago, Houston, Washington, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. Although Minneapolis seems out of place in the list, Flight Options explains that it has 16 Fortune 500 companies and a diversified economy heavy on such bizjet-friendly enterprises as electronics, high-tech and music.
