How the Air Cruise Became Luxury Travel’s Hottest New Trend

After Bruce Jones sold his company, Triton Submarines, in 2022, the now 68-year-old mulled a trip. Not a quick getaway, though, but a months-long adventure—he was determined to circumnavigate the globe. An inveterate traveler who grew up partly in the Philippines and has visited more than 120 countries, Jones had nurtured the dream for some time. So he and his wife, Liz, a fellow licensed pilot, invested in a twin-engine Diamond DA62 and started flying it on short hops, road-testing it for comfort. It failed—big time. “Twelve hours in a smaller airplane, where you can’t move around and there’s no bathroom? Liz wasn’t comfortable with that,” Jones says. 

The Idaho-based couple sold the plane and started looking for an alternative way to fulfill that globe-spanning wanderlust—which is how we’ve come to find ourselves chatting somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, relaxing in comfy armchairs on an Airbus A340 jetting toward Tahiti. Jones out-sourced his dream to Safrans du Monde, signing up with the French firm for its 22-day private-jet trip around the world. Priced from about $104,000 per person, the journey includes all transportation and activities as well as five-star hotels in roughly a dozen ports of call, plus excursions to major sites such as the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu. 

Jones might not be piloting this plane, but at least it has a bathroom—several, in fact. There’s a substantial wine list, too. (No self-respecting French travel operator would offer just a single variety of Champagne.) The craft, on lease from Maltese charter firm AirX, has ample space to move around; a sitting room, complete with sofa, is situated in the rear. Jones has never taken a group trip before, but here he’s one of 70 or so passengers, further decanted into smaller groups of around 16 for most activities. It’s an eclectic bunch: Sonia King is a mosaic artist from San Francisco traveling with her husband, Harvey Malloy, a retired executive director of a music nonprofit; while Maryland-based Leslye Staub and her husband, Tony, just sold their catering business. Mary Frances Ewing, a financial adviser from Arizona, is on board with her husband, Stephen, an architect. “I was a member of a travel club when I was in high school, the Atlanta Skylarks,” she recalls. “They had one or two little planes and trips you could choose from. That’s what I’d really love to have again.”

These intrepid travelers are modern-day Phileas Foggs, tackling the gist of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days if not the dilatory pace—this carefully plotted itinerary will shave weeks off that time frame. Such six-figure expeditions, nicknamed air cruises, are a growing niche in high-end travel. Four Seasons hotels operates its own branded 52-seat jet, while Aman has teased the launch of an 18-seat Airbus ACJ319 that will pinball between its properties on private charters in partnership with Asia specialist Remote Lands. It’s scheduled to take off on its 21-day inaugural trip in September, with a price tag of $194,888 per person. TCS World Travel and Abercrombie & Kent are rival operators behind globe-trotting charters similar to those from Safrans, while Roar Africa hires a custom-fitted Emirates Executive Jet for its Greatest Safari on Earth program, which whisks a handful of travelers around the African continent on a 12-day, $195,000-per-person jaunt; that route now runs twice a year, due to increased demand since its launch as an annual adventure in 2021. 

You can do all this on a cruise ship but it takes 134 days.

– Jane Dowling

“Some people come to Dubai in their own planes and leave them there,” says Roar Africa founder and CEO Deborah Calmeyer. “If you want to do a trip in Africa, this crew knows how to do it,” she says, whereas pilots without specialized experience in the area (i.e., your own, most likely) “will be terrified for their safety, with animals on the runway and that kind of thing. We’re a concierge service.” 

A preplanned private-jet trip is certainly the easiest way to hopscotch around the globe. This Safrans itinerary, which begins and ends in Paris and focuses on classic attractions (the company also offers a more unexpected itinerary that varies its route each time), includes hard-to-reach Rapa Nui, a.k.a. Easter Island. Commercial-air connections to the scrubby territory 3,700 miles off the coast of South America are spotty and often require travelers to linger longer than they might prefer—service is solely to Santiago and sometimes just once per week. Our group, by contrast, touches down via private jet and spends Saturday night at a party, the sun setting behind an ominous, wide-eyed moai, one of the monumental figurative sculptures for which Rapa Nui is famous. The next morning, we wake early to race round the 63-square-mile island and see the major sites where these monoliths were carved and installed. From there it’s back onto the plane for takeoff to Tahiti, the ink on our passport stamps barely dry. 

“The itinerary was the clincher for me,” says Jane Dowling, who lives in Arizona and runs a research company. She’s traveling alone, as she often has since her partner died. For her, destinations such as Angkor Wat and Sydney—two other ports of call—were vital; she’d had to cancel a pandemic-era trip Down Under. The speedy convenience was also appealing. “You can do all this on a cruise ship, but it takes 134 days.” 

Convenient, yes, but not without hiccups: While hotel dining and accommodations are universally superb, as are the guides in every location, the plane itself is a little tired—indeed, early bookings promised an A321neo rented from La Compagnie before this decades-older A340 was swapped in, offering neither Wi-Fi nor reliable power sources at its seats. There’s a commercial connection from Lima to Cusco, Peru—“We left it too late to get a landing slot at Cusco,” the pilot tells me later, by way of apology—and it’s a jarring, cramped slog compared with the comfort of the jet. (Many complain, and a later planned commercial leg, to reach Agra in India, is replaced by a private charter.) The onboard catering is also hit-and-miss. Serving three-course meals often takes hours, and many are disappointed that the fine French dining, touted as a perk to the trip, is underwhelming. One of the grumblers, catering veteran Leslye Staub, jokingly offers to help upgrade the menu on future flights in exchange for free passage. “I don’t really know what the chef’s purpose was,” she says after returning home, referring to the onboard menu planner. “The only thing that fell short on the trip was the food.” Luggage coordination is similarly patchy: Checked bags are slow to be delivered, and the porter service that passengers were promised hasn’t materialized. “I didn’t think I was going to have to handle the luggage as much as I have,” says Dowling. 

Still, it’s easy to understand the rise in popularity for this mode of exploration. The pandemic normalized private-jet travel as an option for a wider swath of fliers: Between 2019 and 2021, commercial carriers’ share of premium travel dropped from 90 percent to 80 percent, according to Alton Aviation Consultancy, while Hamburg-based market-intelligence firm WingX says the number of business jets in the sky has doubled from pre-pandemic levels and now accounts for a quarter of U.S. traffic. 

Canny luxury operators, spotting a freshly primed market, swung into action by offering a memorable turnkey vacation—the air cruise—to charter newbies. But while its popularity has increased as of late, the concept itself isn’t new. Charter-style trips like this debuted in the late 1980s, and Safrans founder and CEO Guy Bigiaoui ran his first such air cruises in the 1990s, which was around the same time that both TCS and Abercrombie & Kent began operating them. 

“What you’re getting for $100,000 is peace of mind. You’re paying for them to babysit you. That’s a big part of what you’re buying.”

– Henry Harteveldt, an aviation analyst

Anne Epting is senior vice president in charge of those itineraries for A&K now. She emphasizes that, for most, the major appeal is the luxury of the itinerary rather than the hotels or onboard fripperies. Reaching Saint Helena Island, for example, requires specially trained pilots who can handle the wind shears at its airport, precluding ready access, but when A&K offers the chance to visit, it’s with a Saint Helena–seasoned pilot in the cockpit. Founder Geoffrey Kent, a real-life Indiana Jones (aside from the cut-glass British accent), often leads the A&K air cruises, and the firm will even upgrade local amenities on its guests’ behalf. “In Brazil, we took over a 100-room resort for 60 people and brought in furniture, added bath mats, upgraded the linens, and hired our own chef to work with the local team,” says Epting. 

Some travelers prefer an even more tailor-made option: a custom, private air cruise aboard their own jet—albeit a larger, comfier craft than Bruce Jones had planned. Take the man who has done it twice already and is now prepping for a third odyssey, each planned by Cookson Adventures. That client is also a VistaJet customer, and so used one of its planes for both journeys, each around 40 days long. The first followed the Tropic of Cancer, while the second traced the equator; next he’ll follow the Tropic of Capricorn, stopping off in Madagascar and the Kimberley wilderness in Australia, among other destinations. According to Cookson managing director Nick Davies, such trips can cost anywhere between $500,000 and $10 million. He often designs them so that clients sleep on the plane, then land in the morning in a far-flung location—say, the Fijian island of Laucala, once owned by Malcolm Forbes—to spend the day exploring, perhaps incorporating a luxury picnic with a jaw-dropping view, before sleeping on the plane en route to the next stop. Expedition doctors, videographers, and hosts on the ground to coordinate logistics are typical additions to the entourage. 

Safrans’s Bigiaoui insists that such solo flights miss a key point of this type of trip. “Every year, we have a mix of people on the aircraft who would never meet—that’s part of the richness of the tour,” he says. “I had a billionaire on board who told me, ‘I could buy the aircraft or the airline, but traveling here, I’ll meet people I won’t in everyday life.’ ” 

A doctor and a videographer are on this Safrans trip, too. Meanwhile, to Bigiaoui’s assertion, two couples have bonded so well that they’ve already planned another joint holiday, albeit a more conventional villa rental. Bigiaoui says this isn’t uncommon—indeed, clients who met onboard and book again together are one of his best sources of repeat customers. 

The sheer distance covered makes air cruises something of a philosophical anomaly in the industry today, where slow travel (spending substantial time in one place, with a more mindful, eco-friendly perspective) is the buzzword. But Bigiaoui bats away concerns over sustainability by noting, somewhat bizarrely, that the average air time for his plane is three hours per day—far less than were it working a commercial route. “We are saving the planet thousands of tons of carbon. This is mathematical,” he says, with a Gallic shrug. 

Yet travel-industry observers flag other issues besides ecological footprint. “It’s an oxymoron, because the whole point of paying for private travel is to do whatever the heck you want, rather than have a specified itinerary,” scoffs Richard Aboulafia, an aviation expert who runs Aerodynamic Advisory. Then there’s the cost. Many passengers on this flight, who typically paid around $100,000 per person, consider the ticket price to be a bargain. “My wife passed away, and I’m affluent enough to do this,” says Larry Wheeler, a 68-year-old financial adviser. Noting that he has no children of his own, he adds, “So who’s going to benefit from my passing? I figured: Screw it, let’s bounce the check to the undertaker.” Henry Harteveldt, an aviation analyst, calculates that this type of travel, accommodation, and food and beverage, handled independently and using commercially scheduled aircraft, would cost only $75,000 or so per person; even with the convenience and comfort of a private jet, he doesn’t consider the trip particularly good value. “What you’re getting for $100,000 is peace of mind,” Harteveldt says. “You’re paying for them to babysit you. That’s a big part of what you’re buying.” He pauses, then adds, “and an Instagram-worthy trip that’s something to brag about.” 

Harteveldt raises another issue. Uniquely among operators of this kind, Safrans flies one plane but provides two different experiences simultaneously: Alongside my group, known as Première, there’s another, less-expensive option dubbed Club, in which a ticket costs about $74,000. (At the time of writing, prices for 2025 had risen to about $108,000 for the Club experience and $152,000 for Première.) The groups are kept largely separate from one another, sitting apart on the aircraft and eating different meals. They don’t even stay in the same hotels. The Première group enjoys extra perks, such as expedited immigration in Peru. The Club touring groups can be larger, too, at up to 25 people each. On the rare occasions when everyone is together outside the plane, as with that party on Rapa Nui, the groups don’t mingle, and staying with the Club group in a tired, soulless Hilton hotel on Moorea, in French Polynesia, is a markedly less-lavish experience than the five-star glad-handing enjoyed by Première passengers at the Conrad hotel on Bora Bora. 

Harteveldt is flummoxed by this two-tier approach. “I’m shocked they do that, because one of the premises of these luxury air cruises is that everyone is a VIP,” he says. “It’s anathema to what these trips are supposed to be.” 

That stop in French Polynesia was particularly poignant for Canadian Larry Wheeler, whose wife died unexpectedly last year. Keen travelers, they’d planned to visit Tahiti together, and he brought some of her ashes to scatter there when he finally touched down. And it’s impressive to see the Safrans team spring into action when Wheeler’s passport proves problematic: Thanks to diplomatic spats between Canada and India, he’s alone in being barred from India and won’t make the final two stops, in Agra and Jaipur. But within 24 hours, he has been rerouted (all at Safrans’s expense) on a custom private jaunt to Bangkok and Oman. “Would I do it again? Absolutely,” he says by phone after returning home. 

Perhaps that’s the best gauge of the trip’s success. Though there’s griping around small issues—nearly everyone complains, unprompted, about both the baggage handling and the lackluster onboard food—the overall feedback is overwhelmingly positive. “My biggest conclusion is that the phenomenally fabulous idea of going around the world was pretty great, but it’s not for pussies,” laughs artist Sonia King after finishing the journey. “If you’re not up to it, it will take it out of you.” 

Arnold Weil has no reservations in recommending it. “Everyone on the trip was a veteran traveler, but it’s arguably the most incredible trip I’ve ever taken in my life. It was unequivocally excellent in almost every way,” he says from his home in Miami. Weil is a youthful 62-year-old retired orthopedist who lives there with his wife, Glenda. “Our group had fun, we were always laughing, and we just clicked. When I think about it, I’m almost in tears: We flew in a seaplane over Sydney, rode in rickshaws in Vietnam, and took old classic cars through town in Jaipur. It’s one of those experiences you can’t even really explain to someone.”