Private Airliners: Inside the Boeing BBJ and Airbus ACJ

Above the world of purpose built business jets sits a rarer and grander class of aircraft. The private airliner is a full size commercial jet, the same type that carries hundreds of passengers on scheduled routes, converted instead into a flying residence for a single owner. Boeing and Airbus both build them, and their customers are heads of state, royal families, corporations, and a small number of the wealthiest private travelers on earth.

Boeing Business Jets

Boeing's business jet line begins with the BBJ 737 MAX, which the company says offers three times the cabin space of a typical private jet. It flies up to 6,600 nautical miles nonstop, roughly fifteen hours in the air, and carries nineteen or more passengers across multiple lounges, private rooms, staterooms, and VIP lavatories. Boeing notes that the aircraft can reach 99.9 percent of all global business aviation flights without stopping. For buyers who want still more room, Boeing offers the BBJ 787 and BBJ 777X, widebody aircraft that elevate the private airliner to the scale of a true intercontinental home.

Airbus Corporate Jets

Airbus builds its own family under the ACJ name. The newest and smallest, the ACJ TwoTwenty, is based on the A220 airliner and offers a cabin of 786 square feet arranged as six personalized living zones, with a range of 5,650 nautical miles. Above it, the ACJneo is based on the A320, and the range climbs through the ACJ330neo to the ACJ350, Airbus's widebody flagship. Each step up trades nothing in comfort while adding space and reach, until the aircraft becomes a genuine home that happens to fly between continents.

A Home in the Sky

What sets these aircraft apart is not speed or efficiency but sheer volume. Where a large business jet measures its cabin in living areas, a private airliner measures it in rooms. Owners commission full bedrooms with real beds, offices, dining rooms that seat a boardroom, lounges, and bathrooms with stand up showers. The aircraft is delivered as a bare green airframe, and a specialist completion center then spends years building the interior, a process that can cost as much as the aircraft itself.

Who Flies Them

Private airliners are the rarest aircraft in civil aviation. They are the choice of governments that must move a leader and a working staff across the world in security, of royal families, and of the handful of individuals for whom even a flagship business jet feels small. They are less a means of travel than a residence that follows its owner around the globe, and they represent the absolute ceiling of what private aviation can offer.