The champagne is ready to be uncorked and there’s Beluga caviar on board for the maiden flight of a remodelled Boeing jet plane. The plane, with sofas and reclining chairs, looks more like a living room than the interior of an aircraft. As it takes off, the guests applaud and soon an immaculately dressed airhostess serves Moet & Chandon. Rock music plays in the background. The plane cost upwards of Rs 50 crore and belongs to a Mumbai-based millionaire who does not want to be named.

Welcome to the world of the new jetsetters. Owning a plane or helicopter has got to be one of life’s greatest indulgences. It separates the merely wealthy from the seriously rich. And now, India has a whole new bunch of jet-setters who’ve entered this uber-exclusive world, joining media bigwigs like the Bhartias (Shobhana Bhartia recently flew to a wedding in Chennai), and business tycoons like the Ambanis .

Currently, there are over 70 private jets in India. Bombardier Learjet, the world’s first company to get into the private jet market, set up operations in Mumbai earlier this year. The company which sold about 270 planes worldwide in 2005 has already sold four jets in Delhi and Mumbai since February this year. Three of these planes are the Global Express, one of the plushest private jets available, and apparently Bill Gates’ favourite. Cost: $47 million (Rs 218.6 crore).

But increasingly, it’s not just the Ambanis or Birlas who own planes. Several smaller industrialists are soaring to the skies in their own jets. Take Karan Singh, 31, who is passionate about aviation. A pilot with over 5,000 hours of flying experience, Singh has teamed up with two Delhi based industrialists to buy a Citation 3 (Rs 80 crore) and a Gulfstream aircraft (Rs 70 crore). They’ve bought the planes for easy mobility since their businesses are abroad and are working out how to share the aircraft between them. “The costs of maintaining a plane are huge,” says Singh.

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