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If you look at the car industry there are luxury comfort brand like Rolls Royce or Bentley but super expensive racing cars are probably even more popular. They offer limited comfort, are not practical, almost not usable on normal roads, not very reliable and offer terrible fuel consumption. But still everybody dreams about them and a lot of companies try to manufacture.

Business jet can offer luxury and comfort but what to do if you want some excitement or performance? Why are there no jets with massive after burning engines with thrust bigger than weight that can climb straight up and do several G? Something like a cross-breed between a Gulfstream and an F15? Maybe it's good business case to manufacture something like this?

mins
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Andrius
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    that can climb straight up and do several G - why? – Simon Feb 02 '16 at 08:48
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    @Simon The question is: Why not? I'd like to fly in such a thing ;) – jklingler Feb 02 '16 at 08:51
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    Several wealthy individuals privately buy retired military jets. (With weapons and other classified equipment removed of course.) I doubt there's much of a case for designing fast jets for solely private use though. – Andy Feb 02 '16 at 09:22
  • The french/german AlphaJet is used by RedBull, but they didn't produce any new ones. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Jet Probably you need not only money but also "contacts" as well, because they are still in use by different operators. – Peter Feb 02 '16 at 15:09
  • Who says that expensive cars are bought for the driving pleasure? Their main purpose is to show off, and that is much easier if they are parked in the garage next to your house, and not on an airfield miles away. – Peter Kämpf Feb 02 '16 at 16:11
  • @PeterKämpf Once you are rich enough you could buy a nice house with an airfield attached. Then shiny aircraft lives next to house. Problem solved. :) – curious_cat Feb 03 '16 at 02:52
  • If I owned a private jet I wouldn't want to ruin the fine glasses by throwing the aircraft around, nor would I fly it myself. If you're rich enough to buy a private jet, you'd just buy an aerobatic aircraft/warbird surely? If I had the kind of money to own a private jet, you can be damn sure I'd have bought a Spitfire first. – Jon Story Feb 03 '16 at 10:51
  • You can buy a Mig but can have a bit of trouble importing it to usa – jean Feb 03 '16 at 10:57
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    This question brought to mind the Bede BD-10. It was intended to be a supersonic kit plane, but they never worked the bugs out of it. Notably, the vertical fins tended to break off. – Fred Larson Feb 03 '16 at 18:33

1 Answers1

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The reason these aren't built is that there's no market for them. Sure, there's loads of people who would love one of these (including me) but they would be incredibly expensive to buy and operate, far out of reach for anyone but the extremely wealthy.

At the airfield I fly from there are Jet Provosts, a 50's era jet trainer, available. These old, not particularly fast or agile jets cost about 1000 USD per hour to fly. I've seen Mig-21 (certainly fast with lots of Gs) training for about $4500 per hour, which gives you an idea of the running costs for a fast, exciting jet.

The existing market of people who can afford this is already supplied by military surplus jets. These run from trainers like the L-39 and Gnats to fighters and bombers like Migs, an F-104, hawker hunter, there's even a privately owned Harrier. These don't cost that much to buy considering what one would cost new, and there's plenty of them on the market, so there's no call for new builds.

GdD
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  • But is the cost alone an obstacle? As rich people get richer and richer it doesn't matter. Probably there is no any reason to buy Bugatti Veyron and drive 400km/h with service costs comparable with jet fighter but it's still very popular and all examples were sold out. – Andrius Feb 02 '16 at 12:05
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    @Andrius Cost is not the obstacle. The lack of market is. 100% of very rich people know how to drive a car. But only 1 out of thousands of very rich people know how to fly at the level needed for your activity. So where is the market in that??? – Steve H Feb 02 '16 at 12:20
  • As @JanHudec says, part of the reason rich people buy extremely expensive cars is to show off. You can't really show off much in a "luxury fighter jet". – semi-extrinsic Feb 02 '16 at 13:51
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    A (demilitarized) fighter jet is still several times more expensive than Veyron in purchase. But it's thousands of times more expensive in maintenance. Rich people stay rich because they don't buy things that would ruin them. – Agent_L Feb 02 '16 at 13:54
  • It's not true! L-39 can cost much less than $100.000 – Andrius Feb 02 '16 at 14:47
  • A dozen or so years ago I remember seeing someone trying to dump a bunch of - supposedly factory refurbished - Mig-17's for $20k each. – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Feb 02 '16 at 15:15
  • @Andrius See his point about the maintenance. Buying a (used) airplane isn't nearly as expensive as flying it and keeping it airworthy. The fuel alone would cost a fortune for a high-performance fighter-like jet. Also, your question was about why new planes are not designed, not about old ones. Look up the cost of a new fighter and you'll have your answer. You'd literally need to be a billionaire to be able to afford most of them (assuming that you don't want to spend more than a third of your net worth just in the original purchase price.) – reirab Feb 02 '16 at 19:22
  • Airbus supports Aerion AS2. I don't think it's going to be cheap. Why don't take 30 years old technology of Fourth-generation jet fighter and instead military payload add seating for several passengers? Should be rather cheap as all those radars, sensors and military computers are really expensive – Andrius Feb 02 '16 at 19:33
  • I wouldn't describe the AS2 as "aerobatic" though. And to be fair, I'm sure if you have enough money there's a government somewhere around the world who'll sell you a surplus F-16 or something. You could've bought a Corvette (ship) a couple of years ago if you'd had the spare $100 million or so Brunei was asking for it... You could've had three, in fact, if you had a spare $300M. – Jon Story Feb 03 '16 at 10:56