I get the whole outrage thing, but there are a lot of jobs where the time lost spending a day traveling someplace and a day traveling back costs the company more in lost resources than using the corporate jet. When you have a C-level executive who needs to travel to multiple sites across the country weekly, they'll end up spending over half their working hours navigating hotels and airports. It's easy to say they're squandering money, but only if you also say that their time isn't worth very much (which I suppose is easy to do when talking about Ford, Chrysler, and GM CEOs). But asking them in the hearing whether they plan on selling their jets? That's just a cheap stunt. - Kevin Fox

If I were in that room, asked that question (and I'm glad I wasn't), I'd say I'd consider it if the federal government hadn't made reliable efficient public air travel an impossibility over the last decade. - Kevin Fox

Jeez, they should quit whining like spoiled babies and start making great cars to compete with the Japanese. - Sally Church

Agreed. Then they might be able to better justify their planes, or even start making their own: http://hondajet.honda.com/ - Kevin Fox

Uh... I can't think of a single CEO outside of Steve Jobs whose time might actually be worth $20,000 a day. Next time, take time out from work and drive in one of the cars you build. (edit: forgot the word "actually" since I know some of them actually are PAID more than that) - Cyndy

The math is more complicated than that. In the more efficient cases (and I have no idea how profligate these three particular CEOs are) an executive may need to visit five campuses scattered around the country. With a dedicated jet they can do that in a single day, or perhaps two. Using public air travel such a trip would usually take 6 days, so the trade-off is $20,000 (actually make it $40K, a reasonable number, equating to about 20 hours of air travel) for 4-5 days where the C-level employee isn't away from the office and relatively out of the loop. Consider that this also lets them bring 4-10 support staff for free and it's not outrageous at all. - Kevin Fox

Kevin, that's not flying to Washington to put your hand out for taxpayer dollars, though, is it? - Cyndy

Also, so much of the costs are amortized ownership costs as opposed to hourly use costs, so one or two corporate jets used by dozens or hundreds of employees is far more reasonable than a 'CEO jet' waiting on the tarmac whenever Mr. CEO needs to travel. And in those sorts of single-primary-user cases, they usually rent the jet out on a daily basis to other companies or individuals which drastically defrays the costs. If you have a good agent, rental fees more than cover your own fuel and maintenance costs. - Kevin Fox

Cyndy, isn't it disingenuous to fly coach for this one trip to make things look good? If you have a staff of 10 people who need to come with you, and you absolutely can't risk a delayed or cancelled flight meaning you're a no-show for the congressional hearing, then you need to fly in the day before, so the situation is comparable. - Kevin Fox

No, it shows you have a plan to turn things around, cut costs, and are going to make attempts to do so. The rest of America has to plan ahead to get places. - Cyndy

@Kevin's remarks -- makes me wish I could 'like' comments - patrick collison

Cyndy: By that logic, wouldn't a road trip be the right way to go? It's only a 9 hour drive http://maps.google.com/maps... and air travel is more expensive and more damaging to the environment. My point is that the breakeven point for time vs money is different for different people, and for the CEO of a $5B company it's probably private jets because of the value of their time to the company, regardless of their personal worth. - Kevin Fox

Not that it's relevant, but I absolutely think that the big 3 should walk away empty-handed. Their profits and stock have dropped far longer and faster than the S&P because their business practices and product offerings are uncompetitive. If they couldn't turn it around over the last 5 years, why do we think they can during a recession/depression? 'Too big to fail' is the rationale that brought down the lending industry when it eventually reached the subsequent 'bigger they are, harder they fail' stage. - Kevin Fox

Driving is only better if the execs carpool or drive something more efficient than what they make. Flying is ~30-40mpg per passenger in a typically loaded plane going about that distance. - Seth

Why can't the execs carpool (or jetpool as the case may be)? - Gabe

@Gabe: you put a bigger risk by putting big execs in the same plane together; if the plane crashes, you just lost 3 CEOs (the effect of which is another matter to discuss for these particular CEOs :) Usually "key employees" in the same company cannot travel together for the same reason. - Olivier Tharan

We've all seen how Big 3 laborers cost more than their counterparts in Japanese automakers. How much do their executives cost compared to their Japanese counterparts? - Gabe