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Inside Dubai’s new private jet that hosts parties in the sky: Fly Five takes aviation to new highs with its five-star experience and customisable LED lights – but with a US$14,000 hourly rate
STORYBloomberg
- Forget the stiff corporate jets seen on Succession – Dubai’s party-hard Five Hotels & Resorts aims to bring the fun on board and in the sky with its exclusive new aviation experience
- The group’s first hotel Five Palm Jumeirah is known for its celebration-worthy appeal, and joins giants like Aman and Four Seasons, which also offer luxurious private jet trips
If Dubai hotels are constantly trying to outdo each other by reaching to stratospheric heights with their over-the-top amenities, one hotelier wants to win the battle once and for all: he’s literally taken his brand to the sky.
Starting Thursday, the party-hard Five Hotels & Resorts starts accepting bookings on its very own 16-passenger private jet, promising that the entertainment will begin before you even get to Dubai. Flights aren’t limited to hotel guests, though. Anyone can book the plane for a trip of up to 12 hours.
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This isn’t the stuffy corporate jet seen on Succession, where people whisper about contingency plans and offer talking points. This plane is made for boozy celebrations and out-of-your-seat dancing: its LED lights can make the entire cabin glow purple or whatever colour you’d like. Behind a door toward the back of the main cabin is the bedroom with a king-size bed. Instructions printed next to it remind passengers that its maximum occupancy is two, and a “gust belt” must be worn when in use. (Picture a long seat belt that goes under the covers in the middle of the mattress.)
“We’ve started thinking of ourselves as an entertainment company,” says Kabir Mulchandani, Five Global Holdings’ chairman and founder, who personally owns the plane. The group’s first hotel, Five Palm Jumeirah, is already known locally as one of the biggest party hotels in the city. It regularly hosts star DJs for beach parties, and guests can drive its supercar right into the hotel’s nightclub – for a fee of US$2,700 (10,000 dirhams).
A select number of hotels own their own aircraft, but for logistical purposes, not for partying: luxury African safari operators have fleets of small planes to reach extremely remote destinations, while some in the Maldives operate planes to bring guests to outlying islands. Luxury resort Aurora Anguilla owns a jet to offer quicker passage to guests from South Florida or New York City, and it’s also used to import necessary items to its namesake island, where local purchasing is limited. Meanwhile, hotels such as Aman and Four Seasons have offered private jet trips, but they are excursions of a few weeks at a time rather than simply a mode of transport, with logistics arranged by third-party operators.
Trips on the Five plane will cost about US$13,000 to US$14,000 per hour of flight time, not including various relocation costs, which would mean about US$195,000 for a round trip between London and Dubai. At about US$12,000 per person on a full flight, it’s roughly equivalent to a first-class ticket on Emirates Airlines.
