October 29, 2003

Athletes Pay to Join Jet Set
Private Flights Buy Time with Family

By Pete Williams
Special for USA Today

As the NBA regular season began for the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night, Shaquille O'Neal's travel expenses took a precipitous drop.

O'Neal and the rest of the Lakers will travel via private charter flights throughout the year. That means the 7-1 center no longer will pay for private charters as he does throughout the offseason to avoid the hassles of traveling commercially.

"It's impossible for me to walk through an airport," says O'Neal, who spends about $500,000 annually on private jet travel. "I'd never get to the plane."

O'Neal is hardly alone among the increasing number of pro athletes who turn to private jet travel to avoid airport hassles and spend more time with loved ones -- even in the middle of the season.

Private jet travel enables players -- spending an average of $350,000 a year -- to crisscross the country without worrying about connections, delays or making it back in time for a game or practice.

In April, O'Neal flew via a $25 million Citation X to the Lakers' opening-round playoff game on the road in Minneapolis after staying an extra day in Los Angeles to be with his wife and newborn son. Total cost: $26,000. Two days later, O'Neal spent $42,000 to fly to his grandfather's funeral in South Carolina. Because of time constraints, neither trip could have been made commercially.

Last month, the Boston Red Sox gave shortstop Nomar Garciaparra permission to skip the team's regular-season finale to attend a Women's World Cup soccer match. To make it to Columbus, Ohio, on time, the shortstop flew aboard a $10 million Raytheon Hawker 1000 jet.

The two-hour flight from St. Petersburg, Fla., where the Red Sox finished the season against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, cost Garciaparra about $9,500. That's an especially hefty price considering his fiancée, Mia Hamm, sat out the U.S. team's game against North Korea.

But convenience and comfort are worth it. Pro athletes can avoid the post-Sept. 11, 2001, delays of commercial air travel and fly in autograph hound-free luxury, in some cases even departing from team travel itineraries to spend additional time with family.

"It's not something you're going to do all the time," Garciaparra says. He says he travels mostly by commercial carriers. "But there are times where if you want to be somewhere, it's the most convenient option."

Private travel for the calling

As sports salaries have soared, athletes have begun traveling in a manner once reserved for CEOs, rock bands and movie stars. The twist is they don't have to purchase an aircraft or even a share of one.

More than 200 sports stars subscribe to one of several private jet programs. The most popular plan is marketed by Marquis Jet Partners. Recent entrants include Delta Air Lines' executive jet program, in tandem with aircraft maker Bombardier, and CitationShares Holdings, a joint venture of Cessna Aircraft Co. and charter operator TAG Aviation USA.

These programs provide air travel for between $4,000 and $12,000 for each hour of flight time. Even for pros earning more than $10 million annually, that's an eye-popping tab. But athletes, especially baseball players who live in one city and play in another, say it's worth it to carve out additional family time during a grueling schedule with few off days.

"It's expensive, no matter what your income is," New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada says. "But it means so much to spend that extra day or day and a half at home."

Marquis Jet Partners lets its cardholders fly privately without the burdens of owning aircraft. Like expensive prepaid calling cards, time is deducted from 25-hour blocks costing from $109,000 to $330,000, depending on the size of the aircraft.

Because golfers and NASCAR drivers travel independently, it's usually more cost-effective for them to purchase planes or "fractions," aerial timeshares that provide a large block of hours. The Marquis program is more popular among team sport athletes who wish to travel privately when not with the team during the offseason, All-Star breaks and in-season off days. Marquis also has celebrity clients such as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lopez and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

In the lap of luxury

Although pricey, private jet travel has its privileges.

The planes are equipped with between seven and 10 wide leather seats, each with seatbelt latches made of 24-karat gold. The carpet is freshly shampooed and the ceiling lined with suede, brushed before every flight.

There are up to five video monitors, each capable of displaying its own movie. The bathroom is stocked with toiletries and is spacious, unlike the knee-crunching lavatories on commercial flights. There's even a flight attendant on board the larger aircrafts.

"You get kind of spoiled," Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi says. "To say it's a first-class operation is an understatement."

Marquis passengers travel via private terminals. Although cars no longer can pull up to the tarmac at most airports, athletes typically go from curbside to cabin within five minutes. They can use the on-board phones at no charge for the duration of the flight.

Dogs are welcome and can roam freely. Passengers can visit the cockpit while airborne, which is always popular with children. Even cigar and cigarette smoking is allowed, although few athletes exercise the option. Transportation to and from the airport is one of the few charges not included.

The planes even have seats that fold out into beds, big enough to accommodate 7-footers such as O'Neal, who often travels in the offseason with his wife and their five kids. "You have enough room for the kids to play and for everyone to spread out and go to sleep," says O'Neal, who gave up flying commercially seven years ago when it got impossible to walk through airports without being mobbed.

Still, O'Neal resisted the temptation to purchase a jet, which typically costs a minimum of $3 million for a used aircraft, along with monthly maintenance fees and pilot expenses.

Wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, who is in the midst of a six-year, $52 million contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, says he still flies commercially 75% of the time, pulling out his Marquis card only when time is a factor.

"I'm a tightwad," he says. "I fly far too much to fly private all the time. You make a few trips back and forth from Tampa to California on the planes that I use, that's a couple hundred thousand dollars. I'm not a rapper, one of these guys who use a plane for show."

Personal service a plus

Justin Firestone, senior vice president of sports marketing for Marquis, says most athletes are cautious with the purse strings when it comes to private jet travel -- at least at first. "They just need a taste of it to get hooked," he says. "Most are accustomed to traveling privately and first class with their teams. This saves them a lot of headaches."

Firestone, a high school acquaintance of Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez and a nephew of sports interviewer Roy Firestone, devised the program four years ago when Rodriguez suggested a need for a premium private jet charter service.

At the time, Rodriguez and David Cone, then of the Yankees, were among the few players paying for private charters.

Firestone, 26, went to work at eBizJets (now Sentient) and quickly signed up dozens of sports figures, including Rodriguez and O'Neal, who as an NBA rookie in 1992 knew Firestone as a 15-year-old ball boy for the Miami Heat.

Firestone acts as an all-around concierge for the players. Taking a cue from the Four Seasons hotel chain, he has each player's food, beverage and entertainment preferences kept on computer file. No detail is ignored.

When Posada and his family boarded a flight from Chicago to New York after the All-Star Game, there was cake to celebrate his daughter Paulina's first birthday.

Firestone builds an instant rapport with athletes. It helps that he previously worked in media relations for the Heat and Phoenix Suns and is roughly the same age as many of his customers. Firestone also keeps them laughing with dead-on impersonations of Rodriguez and Chicago White Sox second baseman Roberto Alomar.

Well worth the investment

Last year Firestone moved to Marquis Jet, which in 2001 had partnered with NetJets, the fractional ownership program of Executive Jet Inc., a Woodbridge, N.J., company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Firestone gradually has shifted his client base to Marquis and NetJets.

If NetJets were an actual airline, it would rank among the world's largest. It employs 2,500 pilots and has a fleet of 550 jets that's expected to expand to 1,000 by 2005 because of the growing demand.

Unlike charter services, which act as brokers to locate privately owned aircraft, Marquis draws exclusively from NetJets, which has not had an accident involving serious injury to passengers or crew in its 17-year existence. That's a key selling point, particularly after the private plane crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart in 1999.

"There are no do-overs in this business," Posada says. "You want to know that you're absolutely safe, especially now."

Not surprisingly, private jet travel soared after Sept. 11, as security became a greater concern, and athletes, like everyone, faced longer delays traveling commercially.

"You no longer could make it home for a day or two flying commercially without worrying about making it back on time," says Alomar, who has even ventured to Puerto Rico on an off day during the season. "This way, you can control your own schedule."

In recent years, Roger Clemens would fly to Texas on a Sunday evening before an off day, catch one of his four sons' baseball games or practices and meet back up with the team early Tuesday afternoon. Because he and Yankees teammate Andy Pettitte live in the Houston area, they sometimes traveled together and split the costs. When fellow Texans Chuck Knoblauch and Mike Stanton were Yankees, they often tagged along.

Clemens was just as likely to use his private jet access to fly his wife and a combination of his sons to New York or wherever the Yankees were playing, especially as he pursued his 300th win earlier this year. His mother, Bess, who suffers from emphysema and is unable to travel commercially, flew privately from near her Texas home several times recently to see parts of her son's last season.

"She wouldn't be able to see me pitch otherwise," says Clemens, who has a Marquis membership and participates in Bombardier's "Flex Jet" fractional ownership program. "I look at this as a way to buy time that my family and I wouldn't have together.

"It's been well worth it," Clemens adds. "I've been able to catch so many ballgames and special events in my kids' lives. It's the next best thing to being in two places at once."

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