When chartering your own private jet, you can pretty much make any demands you like about what food and drink you are served, what music you want playing, what onboard amenities you'd like stocked and even the color of the seat upholstery – provided you are happy to pay the extras, and that it's legal.
Some wealthy people even use private jets as luxury courier services to have things transported from one place to another. A spokesperson for Jetsmarter told The Telegraph: “We have dispatched a jet to transport Birkin bags back to a client’s hometown after a shopping spree. On another occasion, we flew a mobile phone from New York to South Florida for a client who had left it at home by accident.”
Although these might sound outlandish, sometimes the requests made are on a far larger scale, demanding much larger planes. Air Charter Service (ACS), which provides private jet, commercial airliner and cargo aircraft charters around the world, has revealed the six most unusual things it has been asked to transport aboard its flights…
1. Tomato Ketchup and Meat
The ACS is often called upon to help transport emergency supplies of fast food – fast. But in this case it was a restaurant chain that chartered a Boeing 747 to fly 90 tonnes of tomato ketchup across the US before hundreds of branches ran out. On another occasion, someone requested a Boeing 737-300F to transport 14 tonnes of burgers from Belgium to Sweden for the launch of a new burger – along with copious amounts of dry ice to ensure the meat didn't defrost in transit. The ACS also sent a Boeing 727 to carry over 17 tonnes of ham to Puerto Rico after an administrative error meant the entire island almost ran out of the popular meat.
2. Sand
The ACS once arranged for an aircraft to fly 13 tonnes of sand from Rome to Cairo (a city surrounded by desert) in a Russian-built Antonov An-12. The shipment was for a glassmaking company that needed a special type of sand that wasn't available in Egypt.
3. The World's Heaviest Woman
The ACS once arranged to transport the former world's heaviest woman, Eman Ahmed, from her native Egypt to Mumbai, for life-saving surgery following an online fundraising campaign. A cargo flight was needed to fly the 36-year-old elephantiasis sufferer, who weighed around 500kg, in a modified Egyptair Airbus 300-600.
4. Designer Dresses
When a major design label needed to fly over 400 dresses, 72 pairs of shoes and 40 pairs of trousers from Milan to the French capital in time for Paris Fashion Week, the ACS worked through the night to charter a mixture of cargo and passenger aircraft to safely transport the delicate, high-value garments. Other last-minute fashion requests include flying a plane-load of sports shoes to Mexico and sourcing an onboard courier to deliver a designer top from China to a London photoshoot.
5. Wild Lions
The ACS regularly assists with conservation projects. Not so long ago it chartered a flight for seven wild lions from South Africa to Rwanda to help reintroduce the big cats following the country's 1994 civil war. Two males and five females traveled 2,500 miles, mostly by air, in an Antonov An-26, which had adequate room and ventilation for the animals.
6. Priceless Art
When a museum in Morocco wanted to borrow some priceless art by Pablo Picasso from a gallery in Paris, they soon realised a scheduled flight couldn't carry the unusual three-tonne load, which comprised 11 reinforced wooden boxes up to 2.38 meters high. The ACS sourced an Antonov An-12 and instructed the pilots to fly lower than the usual 30,000 feet in order to avoid damage to the artwork.
How much would these kinds of charters cost?
Dan Morgan-Evans, group cargo director for ACS, says: "Our day-to-day charter clients include a lot of industries involved in 'just in time' manufacturing, such as automotive, technology and aerospace – we arrange more than 4,000 cargo flights every year, so there is a huge variety of requests. We also arrange almost 7,000 passenger charters annually.
"Obviously costs vary wildly depending on aircraft size and route. For example, an intra-European flight carrying a ton of car parts would cost around £5,000-£10,000, whereas the Picasso flight would have cost around £40,000. But some charters (halfway around the world on a B747, for example) can cost upwards of half a million pounds."
