Gulfstream G650, Who Has Them In The Philippines

3 April 2014


The flagship of the Gulfstream fleet, the Gulfstream G650 is an ultra-large-cabin, ultra-high speed business jet capable of reaching speed of Mach 0.925. It is the gold standard in business aviation able to fly 7,000 nautical miles non-stop. And you have to wait until 2017 to get your hands on this business jet    

By Babe G. Romualdez

No matter how wealthy they are, some of the super rich just can’t resist the temptation to make a couple of million dollars in profit by selling their reservation for Gulfstream G650 jets to billionaires who can’t afford to wait four or five years to get their hands on this latest symbol of wealth and affluence. According to parent company General Dynamics, the G650 may yet turn out to be Gulfstream Aerospace’s most profitable aircraft ever, with an overbooked reservation order of over 200 since it was launched in 2010.

Demand is high that impatient billionaires don’t mind paying as much as $10-$15 million more for a “second hand” G650 whose tag price is originally $65 million. Among the high profile owners, include Exxon Mobil, Walmart and Quallcom owners, while Ralph Lauren and Oprah Winfrey are waiting for their own luxury aircraft. Jet brokers are having a heyday, receiving as many as 40 calls a day from interested buyers from Latin America, Russia and the Middle East and one “anonymous” order from the Philippines.

With a top speed of 610 mph/982 kph (or at Mach speed of 0.925, said to be the fastest in the world), plush interiors, high cabin pressure designed to minimize jet lag, the G650 is definitely perfect for those whose businesses require a lot of traveling on a global scale.

As a Gulfstream executive remarked during the Paris Air Show last year, the G650 has become the “gold standard” and has established “a new market segment for the whole industry” – with no real competitors in the next few years until 2017 when Bombardier’s Global 7000/8000 is expected to go into service.

In the Philippines, the only one who owns a Gulfstream jet is ICTSI chairman and president Enrique “Ricky” Razon, who travels in his own G550 to visit his container business empire spread across the world – from Japan, China, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan to Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Brazil, Croatia, Poland and Madagascar in Africa.

Ricky is only one among 10 Filipinos included in Forbes’ elite list of billionaires, with his net worth estimated at $4.2 billion – although Bloomberg places the figure at around $5.2 billion.

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