Washington, D.C. to Chicago — Out and Back in a Day

There is a category of meeting where showing up is the entire point: the pitch, the committee, the signing. Being the party who could not make the date work is a bad position to negotiate from. On Washington, D.C. to Chicago it works out to 516 nm each way, or about 11 h 18 m on the road.

At 516 nm this is a longer day: 1 h 57 m each way, 3 h 53 m of flying. It still closes. On site by 09 12, 5 h 21 m on the ground, home by 18 30. Whether that beats an overnight depends on how long the meeting runs, and we will say so plainly rather than selling the version that bills more hours.

Both ends of this pair have hub airline service, so there is a nonstop and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What the nonstop does not give you is the hour before it: the drive to the main terminal, the screening queue, the gate, and a departure time chosen months ago by a network planner. Door to door, the private version usually saves two to three hours in each direction — and it saves them at the ends of the day, where they are worth the most.

Chicago Executive Airport has 5,001 feet of runway. That is comfortable for the Vision Jet, whose balanced field length is 3,192 feet, and tight or prohibited for several of the light jets you would otherwise be quoted. On a business network the practical effect is that you land at the close-in field rather than the big airport half an hour further out.

We are a broker with three airframes on the sheet. That narrowness is the product: we know the operators, the fields and the real performance rather than guessing across forty types. Every flight is operated by an FAA Part 135 certificate holder.