Fancy a private jet? Plenty of bargains on offer

This could be your big opportunity to get yourself a cut-price private jet. Companies are cutting back on luxury executive travel, so they are selling off their fleets of private jets, which means there are plenty of bargain basement prices on offer.

At the moment 78 of the country's 600 jets are up for sale, according to research by Gama Aviation - an aircraft services company - for the Daily Telegraph. It added that many of them had been culled by companies looking to cut back on their transport budget.

Tesco, for example, parted with the last of its private jets in May this year (after disposing of its other four jets during the preceding six months). It said at the time: "The aircraft have not been used by Tesco since December. In future we will use chartered aircraft only if there is a compelling business justification and travel cannot be completed by scheduled airline."
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The Jet Set

At any point when more than 10% of the UK's jets are up for sale, it's officially classed as a buyers' market, which means there are plenty of bargains for the multimillionaire who wants to join the private jet set. The average asking price is £3.2 million - but there's a huge range of the planes on sale - so you could snap one up for far less.

If you were to splash out. you could join an eclectic group who have decided that hassle-free, private flying is worth the enormous expense - including Jim Carrey, Celine Dion, Tom Cruise, Tiger Woods, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey.

However, even if you spend a few million on a swanky private jet, you know there's always someone who can go one better.

John Travolta is known for his love of aircraft - and unsurprisingly has a whole fleet of them, while Harrison Ford owns eight planes - including a £11.8 million Cessna. Meanwhile Roman Abramovich has a customised Boeing 767 said to be worth £55 million, and Donald Trump's private jet is actually a Boeing 757 worth a reported £65.6 million.

It's enough to make you wonder whether it's worth trying to compete at all.

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Flying high literally as well as metaphorically, pilots top the salary scale this year. There are various routes into the job, from university courses to airlines' own training schemes; private training will set you back as much as £50,000 to £60,000.

"I most enjoy the variety of the job, working as a team, to a schedule, with the responsibility of safely transporting hundreds of people to their destination. I would advise aspiring pilots to thoroughly research training routes, understand the serious financial outlay required with no guarantee of a job after training and to consider other routes such as flight instruction."