What billionaire boys do with their jets

It has always been a frustration for Silicon Valley tycoons: there really is nowhere convenient to park the jet close to the office.

There is San Francisco airport, obviously, or the other international airport at San José. But who wants to get stuck in traffic and passport control when there is business to be done or cocktails to be drunk on Caribbean island hideaways?

Now Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google Inc, appear to have found an answer. For the knockdown price of $1.3 million (£650,000) a year and a few free flights (strictly for scientific reasons), they have signed an agreement to park their personal Boeing 767-200 at a Nasa airfield.

It sounds like a great deal for the valley’s two most famous billionaires. As the crow flies, the Moffett Field is only 1.7 miles (3km) from the Googleplex. By car, according to Google Maps, it is four miles, or about seven minutes.

The Nasa research centre at the airbase is reported to have signed an agreement last month with a private company that counts Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, among its principals to park the wide-bodied jet and two Gulfstream Vs. The deal gives Nasa the right to place instruments or scientists on some of the Google jets to collect scientific data — Nasa had already used one of the Gulfstreams to observe a meteor shower on August 31.

“It was an opportunity for us to defray some of the fixed costs . . . to maintain the airfield as well as to have flights of opportunity for our science missions,” Steven Zornetzer, a Nasa official, told The New York Times. “It seemed like a win-win situation.”

Locals, who have campaigned to prevent the commercialisation of the Nasa base, are not so keen on the deal. “The majority of the people in the community are against that,” said Lenny Siegel, an activist, who gave warning that “the camel’s nose is under the tent” and that Nasa could now seek to open its runways to other private flights.

Mr Brin and Mr Page — whose stakes in Google are valued at about $17 billion each, bought the Boeing in 2005. It can carry about 180 passengers, but the two decided to reconfigure theirs to take about 50 and added a large lounge and multiple bedrooms.

The refurbishment became bogged down in a legal battle after the Google bosses sacked the contractor hired for the job. The designer, Leslie Jennings, who specialises in refitting planes for the super-rich, said that Mr Brin and Mr Page had made a number of “strange requests”, including hanging hammocks from the ceilings of their bedrooms.

He also said that Mr Schmidt had to intercede between them in a row over who got the bedroom with a “California king-sized” bed. The Google CEO reportedly said: “Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let’s move on.”

Flights of fancy

— The Boeing 767 is three times as heavy and almost 70 per cent longer than a standard executive jet

— According to Gore Design’s vice-president of operations, Rick Penshorn, a 767 can be comfortably fitted for private use for around $25 million (£12.5 million)

— Flying a used 767 costs an estimated $13,000 (£6,500) per flight-hour

— Aviation-industry experts estimate that the plane cost up to $15 million (£7.5 million)

— There were an estimated 17 767s in private hands in 2005

— Reported features include a lounge at the front of the plane, with two adjoining staterooms, and a large dining room near the rear

Source: Times archives

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