Jordan Hansell, Chairman & CEO of NetJets, discusses the increase trend of private jet ownership, with Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway CEO; and CNBC’s Becky Quick.
good morning, everybody. welcome back. joining the conversation is net joet’s ceo jordan hansel. thank you so much for joining us here today. thank you. glad to do it. we were just talking inside the global 6,000 about just the idea of how many people are coming back and what the numbers are like. when i talked to bill gates this weekend, he said by looking around at the number of casual sdwrets on therunway, he expected something like 25% more in terms of people who were coming to the annual meeting on private jets. was he right? i think he’s in the ballpark. what do you attribute that to? i think it’s a fact of the economy coming back and people start to go feel optimistic and they want to be here to hear what warren and charlie have to say and they want to do it officially. is this the biggest weekend for you. terms of both the berkshire hathaway meeting and the kentucky derby when you add them up? it’s a big weekend. the biggest weekend for us is the sunday after thanksgiving. ranks up there, too. the kentucky derby, did you have a large number of trips there? we did. is it a situation where people who hadn’t been buyin before are buying in? is this people who are just now feeling they can do something like this or sh a resurgence of all the old customers who were there and are coming back? it’s both from our perspective. we have people who have been in the program flying nor and we’re up year over year 55% in terms of new owners. people that have just come to the program for the
first time. 50% in terms of that? yes. can you give us those numbers? i like to keep it secret unless warren tells me to do otherwise. so 50% in terms of new customers. we keep looking for joe’s name, too. joe, have you jumped in with that yet? we haven’t shown the jet from the other side. and andrew says that’s where my name is. but the more you talk about it — they’re going to pan around at the end of the show. the more you talk about it without doing it, i think i’m getting my hopes up. warren, i had a — i was thinking about the period you had? can you explain. it was based on the dropping value of the jets themselves i think. and how does that work? it’s all accounting. but there are a couple of really tough years. why are you in a business that you can’t necessarily insulate against the next big break, or have you done something differently this time to make sure that doesn’t happen again? we’re not insulated against major down turns in the he economy. that’s part of the business. incidentally, the burlington northern peak was 219,000 car loads. it got down to 152 car loads. all of our businesses, maybe with the exception of insurance. but all our businesses showed declines of one sort or another. at some point significantly during the recession. and you would expect aircraft to be in that group. that doesn’t mean it isn’t good business. seized candy doesn’t make any money eight months of the year. but christmas always
