Elevate Aviation CEO Greg Raiff was recently interviewed by the music industry's leading authority Billboard about the world of private aviation and how artists use private jets on tour.
Below are excerpts from the article with Raiff's take on serving clients, how aircraft are used for global tours, and carbon offsets/sustainability.
Inside the Mega-High-End — And Ultra Expensive —World of Private Jets for Artists
Spreads from Nobu, dog psychologists, airports lounges most people don't even know exist. This is how "the real, true A-listers" fly the rare air of the private skies.
On a balmy afternoon in the summer of 2023, 20,000 people were preparing to see a famous pop star perform at a Denver arena. The only problem: the star was 1,800 miles away in New York and, having overslept, had just missed their flight to Colorado.
No other commercial flights could get them to Denver in time for the show. But a few calls were made, and within an hour a private jet was waiting on an airport runway. A short time later, the artist walked onstage to a roaring crowd that never knew the performance almost didn’t happen. The four-hour flight came with a $60,000 price tag, a bargain compared to the cost of a canceled show.
Private planes have been a fabled element of the superstar musician starter pack for anyone who once had a bedroom wall poster of Led Zeppelin peacocking in front of their Boeing 720 in the 1970s. Since then, they have since ascended into wider awareness via social media, where fans can gawk at any given musical A-lister inclined to post while bathing in athleisure and cruising through time and space in the soft cloister of their “pee-jay.”
But flying the rare air of the private skies is less common among musicians than it might seem. Most artists, whether on tour or in their personal lives, fly commercial, although not in the style any plebeian in line at TSA would recognize. Private jets can also be used less as a flex and more as a necessity as they shuttle artists to more shows than it’s possible to play with any other mode of transportation.
Yet there are perks for those who can afford them, with onboard amenities ranging from private chefs to elite nannies to simply having the privacy to engage in behavior well outside FAA regulations.
Musicians and their teams typically charter jets for one of two reasons. First, as with the sleeping pop star, something has gone wrong, and a last-minute flight is needed to avoid missing an appearance. Second, artist teams book one-off jets when traveling somewhere that would otherwise require multiple layovers and many annoying airport hours.
Elevate Aviation Group works with such superstars. Headquartered in Miami, the company flies presidential candidates, CEOs and celebrities of all flavors, with roughly 15% of its revenue coming from the music business. Founded in 1995 and later named after the 2000 Elevation Tour by its first musical client, U2, Elevate controls a sprawling fleet ranging from two-seat prop jets to Boeing 757s big enough to transport artists and their entire touring teams.
“We have groups that know if they charter a plane with first class and business class sections, a bunch of economy seats and an entire cargo area, it can actually be really cost competitive to put everyone on one big plane rather than flying commercial and buying all those seats in hard markets where there aren’t direct flights,” says Elevate Aviation Group CEO Greg Raiff.
But some artists prefer having the whole plane to themselves. Raiff cites an A-lister as someone who likes sleeping in their own bed after performing, so Elevate just flies this person back and forth from their home city to concerts across the country.
Another client prefers to “spend the day on the beach in the sun with the family, go to the airport in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt at four in the afternoon, get off the plane in full wardrobe, perform, then fly home,” says Raiff. When the artist’s young children wake up in the morning, they barely know their parent was gone.
This mode of travel is expensive and creates an excessive carbon footprint, but Raiff says it can help keep an artist on the road longer than if they were just flying first class. Planes can be outfitted with beds and bedrooms, systems that emulate the sunlight of the destination city to mitigate jet lag and many other bells and whistles designed to optimize wellness. This comfort factor becomes more crucial as legacy acts age and want to keep hitting the road. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on a private jet or a tour bus, touring 39 or 40 weeks a year is just hard,” says Raiff. “Part of what we try to do is make the process as enjoyable and stress-free as possible.”
Top-Shelf Amenities
This comes with a bill. “There’s a reason I’m talking to you from a vineyard,” Raiff says while chatting via Zoom. Private jets can range between $15,000 to $250,000 per flight or more, with some planes going for $50,000 an hour. The price depends on plane size, route, number of passengers and time of year. (“It’s much more expensive to land in Augusta during The Masters than it is to fly there in November,” Raiff points out.)
Raiff recalls a client who wanted a salad they’d enjoyed while in Mexico City to be on the private jet for them when they left town. There was no way for Elevate staff to get the salad in time by car or motorcycle, so they went to pick it up via helicopter, which landed on a soccer field two blocks away from the restaurant, and then airlifted it to the jet. When the musician landed at their destination, the salad was untouched.
Ultimately though, private jets’ reason for being is ease and efficiency. “The most valuable part of flying privately is not necessarily that there’s a bedroom,” says Raiff. “It’s the ability to get in and out of airports much faster, the ability to access many more airports than commercial airlines can and the ability to do it at a schedule that works for you.”
Private jet travelers can go through expedited security and immigration processes and, at smaller airports, have a car drop them off at the steps to the plane. Companies like Elevate that use their own fleets are also solutions for artists who don’t want their personal jets to be tracked, a phenomenon that’s led some mega-wealthy jet owners like LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault to sell the company’s plane after Twitter accounts began reporting its location.
“If you charter an airplane” rather than buying one, says Raiff, “no one knows you’re on it.”
Environmental Impact
Raiff says almost all of Elevate’s musical clients are enrolled in carbon offset or carbon sequestration programs (Taylor Swift, while not a client of either company, has also said she bought enough carbon offsets to cover twice the amount of emissions generated by jet travel for her Eras tour.)
Raiff argues this environmental damage is mitigated by the fact that many people flying privately are doing good work in the world. “If an artist can raise awareness and $10 million for feeding children, but it takes 10 hours and 4,000 gallons of jet fuel to do that, is that a worthwhile investment?” he asks. “I think so, especially because I’ve seen them do carbon offsets for it.”
Read the full interview: https://www.billboard.com/pro/private-jets-music-artist-tours-costs-impact
