Clearing the skies for private jets to take off

Dowley, an executive for a private equity firm and a marketing consultant, said he still flew commercial planes on the long, nonstop routes that airlines offer in abundance. But he will sometimes take a business jet to a smaller destination — the kind of place that could take an additional three hours or more to reach by commercial plane. So he may fly commercially from New York to San Francisco for a meeting in San Jose, and then fly by private jet to San Diego for more meetings.

He said he used private jets “as a filler” to circumvent time-consuming airline schedules that often require inconvenient connections, even on short hops.

He buys hourly flight time on a light jet through NetJets, the leading player in the fractional ownership market, which also sells per-hour private jet flying through its Marquis jet-card program. He said he flew more than 300,000 miles a year for business, about 90% on commercial jets and 10 % on private jets.

“Commercial air is more cost-efficient, but private is a massive timesaver,” Dowley said. “I’m very judicious with the private flying time, though, to manage the cost.”

The industry has been struggling since the recession hit and criticism arose over corporate executives’ use of private jets.

But deteriorating commercial airline service has underscored one of the rationales long

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