Private Airplanes

If you're feeling steamed at the airlines for how they've been treating passengers, you might want to save some outrage for those who fly on private jets, two advocacy groups suggest. As most travelers endure long security lines, increasing flight delays and extra charges for checked baggage, they are helping subsidize far more elegant travel for a privileged few, according to a report to be released today by Washington-based organizations Essential Action and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Embattled U.S. automakers added a new entry to their list of troubles Wednesday: executive jet travel. For a second straight day, the chief executives of Detroit's Big Three tried to convince a skeptical Congress that they deserved $25 billion in emergency loans. But that message was nearly drowned out by discussion of their corporate flying habits, and the Senate later scrapped plans for a vote on the loans today -- dimming hopes for a rescue plan this year.

General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked regulators to block the public's ability to track a plane it uses. "We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed" from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, GM spokesman Greg Martin said Wednesday. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.

The pilots of two World War II-era aircraft escaped serious injury or death Saturday afternoon when their biplanes collided about a mile off the coast of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, authorities said. The midair accident occurred about 3 p.m. when the propeller of a 1942 Boeing Stearman apparently clipped the back side of a 1940 Waco not long after it and a third vintage plane left Torrance Municipal Airport, officials said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein offers plenty of tips on how California households can combat global warming, such as carpooling and running only a full dishwasher. But one bit of information Feinstein declines to share is the number of times that she flew last year on her husband's Gulfstream jet, which burns much more fuel per passenger-mile than commercial airliners. Gov.

It was sunny and breezy at Santa Monica Airport on Saturday, a great day for flying -- and for protesting flying. A few hundred local residents and several politicians held a midday rally in front of the dark glass of the airport's administrative offices (closed on weekends) to decry the environmental and safety hazards of the increasingly busy airfield. Not far in the distance, the objects of their protest -- gleaming private jets -- roared into the sky.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she followed all Senate rules when she accepted rides on a private jet from a longtime benefactor. "Whatever I've done, I complied with Senate rules at the time. That's the way every senator operates," the presidential contender said in an interview with the Associated Press during a campaign stop in Las Vegas. A shareholder lawsuit against Vinod Gupta, a Clinton contributor and chief executive of the data company InfoUSA Inc.

For travelers with private pilot licenses, flying on business is not only a means to an end but also a passion. Flying small, piston-engine planes in and out of general aviation airports -- they make up the vast majority of the nation's roughly 5,200 airports -- would not work for the average corporate traveler. In general, most business travelers would find it too expensive and too difficult to manage.

Private jets were once the rarefied domain of captains of industry, whose corporate derring-do made headlines -- and money. The hassle of flying commercial airliners stole precious moments they could otherwise use to pull off the deal du jour, and although private jets don't cost peanuts, the reasoning went, a corporate rock star shouldn't have to eat peanuts. Which pretty much left the rest of the corporate world begging for an extra bag of Planters on the crowded flight home.

Fighter jets forced four small airplanes to land Monday after they strayed into restricted airspace during President Bush's visit to Rancho Cucamonga, federal officials said. Secret Service agents and local law enforcement officials detained and questioned at least three of the pilots, who were forced to land their private aircraft at airports in Corona, El Monte, Hawthorne and Hemet, said Lt. Jody Vazquez, spokeswoman for North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.