Knoxville by Mid-Morning, Charleston by Dinner

Research collaboration is still, stubbornly, an in-person activity. Lab visits, sponsor meetings, and programme reviews all work better in the building than over a call. On Charleston to Knoxville it works out to 263 nm each way, or about 5 h 45 m on the road.

Leave at 07 15, on site by 09 22, and the aircraft waits while you work. 7 h 01 m on the ground is a full session, and you are home by 18 30. The hotel night, the second working day, and the evening away all come off the cost of the trip — which is usually where the real money was.

The realistic alternative here is driving, and 5 h 45 m each way is the sort of number that gets quietly accepted until someone adds it up. Two of those in a day is most of a working day spent in a car, arriving for the meeting already tired. The scheduled-airline option on a pair this length is usually worse rather than better once you count the drive to the airport, the screening queue, and the connection a route this short often requires.

Charleston International Airport and McGhee Tyson Airport are both business-aviation fields with private terminals, so the ten-minutes-before-departure arrival holds at each end.

One type, learned properly. We place this leg with a Part 135 operator we already know on the Vision Jet, in an aircraft carrying CAPS — a parachute over the entire airframe — and a one-button emergency autoland any passenger can use. For a company putting four people on one aircraft, those are the specifications that matter.