Private Jets Become Flying Palaces

Feb. 22, 2007 — -- Private jet bragging rights among the ultra rich have just taken a quantum leap to a lavish flying palace that is being created inside the biggest passenger plane ever built.

The plane is the Airbus super jumbo A-380, the double-decker that can carry up to 800 passengers if it is configured with only the cheap seats. There will be just 82 passengers in the private version.

Airbus will not identify the individual who ordered the $300 million plane. That price, incidentally, is only the starting point.

Edése Doret, a jet interior expert who is designing the A-380 for the customer will say only that he is a "Head of state." The New York-based Doret, who has customized jets since 1988, says his work will add another $150 million to the total cost.

The price tag includes the cost of modifying the fuselage for an "Air Force One Stairway" which allows passengers and crew to enter the plane directly from the ground through the cargo bay. That stairway leads to a lower spiral staircase which takes passengers to the entry lounge. Another, wide sweeping staircase leads passengers to the grand lounge on the upper deck.

Doret says the buyer's family and friends will occupy the upper deck, which by itself is 147 feet, five inches long, longer than the length of the Wright Brothers' first flight. In addition to the grand lounge it will have a 600-square-foot master suite and other bedrooms, a Jacuzzi, a family dining room, a game room and offices. All of it says Doret "Will be in a desert-like environment."

That environment says Doret will be created by curtains that resemble Arab tents and a mosaic built with fiber optics that will look like shifting desert sands.

The lower deck has an additional dining room and work space as well as seats for the crew and staff.

This is Doret's biggest job which will take about a year and a half, but he is working on a number of projects that are for the super rich. "There are a lot of billionaires out there," he says. And above and beyond the cost of buying and customizing the A-380, its owner will face operating costs of about $25,000 an hour, including the crew of 16.