Deadhead: Jam Band Junkie or Aviation Bargain?

Pop culture defines a Deadhead as a fan of The Grateful Dead who followed the jam band from city to city attending live performances at each stop. In aviation parlance the term has a different meaning altogether, and if you know what it is and how to get one, it can sometimes save you money.

A deadhead is a flight segment an aircraft must fly in order to get into position with no passengers on board. Let\'s say someone charters a plane to go one way from New York to Los Angeles. Since the plane has to get back to its base in New York, it would fly empty and the charterer would be billed for the flight charges. That empty flight segment is called a deadhead.

How can a deadhead save you money? If you are flying one way from Los Angeles to New York or Portland to San Francisco when either of these aircraft are ferrying, you can buy these flight segment at a discount to what they would normally cost. The reason is because you don\'t have to pay positioning costs to get the planes where they need to be. They\'re heading that way already.

Consider this. Are you planning to fly one way from Las Vegas to Philadelphia? The Los Angeles to New York deadhead is your ticket. The plane could make two stops en-route from Los Angeles to New York, one in Las Vegas to pick you up and a second in Philadelphia to drop you off, and it would still be much cheaper than having a plane deadhead empty from Philadelphia back to Las Vegas.

The reason is because the ferry time from Los Angeles to Las Vegas plus the ferry time from Philadelphia to New York combined are shorter that the time the plane would have to spend ferrying from Philadelphia back to Las Vegas. A deadhead from LA to New York would be just as useful if you were flying from Aspen to New York for the same reason.

There\'s no set formula people use to calculate price on deadheads, but the way costs are usually calculated is that you get charged the normal hourly rate the aircraft bills at times the number of hours the plane has to fly from point to point to provide you with service, plus some expenses. What does that mean? Let\'s look at our example of flying from Las Vegas to Philadelphia on a plane deadheading from Los Angeles to New York.

Let\'s say that the plane in question is a mid-size jet that bills out at a rate of $3,200 per flight hour. The flight time from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is approximately 48 minutes or 0.8 hours. The flight time from Las Vegas to Philadelphia is approximately 5 hours, and the flight time from Philadelphia to New York is approximately 42 minutes or 0.7 hours. For this deadhead, you would be billed $3,200 times 6.5 hours or $20,800 plus a few hundred dollars for expenses such as landing fees, etc. Priced as a standard charter, the cost for this trip would be around $33,000. Buying the deadhead in this instance will save you approximately $12,000 or close to 40%.

There are a couple of important things to remember when considering private jet travel by deadhead. The first is that they don\'t always save you money. If you\'re trying to get from Little Rock, Arkansas to Dallas, Texas using a plane that\'s deadheading from Atlanta to Phoenix, it\'s probably not going to work unless you get a special rate. The ferry from Atlanta to Little Rock plus the ferry from Dallas to Phoenix are going to be longer than the ferry from Dallas back to Little Rock. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can\'t always buy a deadhead on a mid-size jet from Los Angeles to New York. Deadheads are subject to availability. You also can\'t pick the aircraft size that\'s deadheading.

If you normally charter a light jet and there is a heavy jet deadheading, it may cost more for the deadhead than to pay for the ferry on the light jet because of the rate differential. Deadheads aren\'t always paid for by another party either. Sometimes planes end up out of position unintentionally and when you show up looking to buy a deadhead, someone might try look to you as their revenue savior and try to overcharge you for what you\'re looking to do so beware. Calling the right private avaiation for assistance in finding a deadhead is more important than calling the right company for a charter because the skill of finding them and making them work is more specialized.

For more information on jet charters, you can search the web or go to a company I use and recommend, Chief Executive Air.

FAA Bureaucracy Insane
The Federal Aviation Administration is considering imposing user fees on general aviation. Why? Because those morons cannot seem to control their cost...

Aviation Safety Critical Item - Engine Too Low
The modern aircraft are getting bigger and bigger but engines are getting lower and lower, a growing tendency? Why? Due to efficiency settings? The en...

Helping Minorities into Aviation Careers Makes Sense
It has been noted that many people in aviation presently that fewer youth are interested in the field and this is problematic as in the future we will...

Recreational Aviation 101
While the majority of hobbies include physical activities like swimming and running, there are more exciting pastimes that leave many people in awe. A...

Brad Morehouse - A True Aviation Sportsman and Jet Air Race Pilot
Brad Morehouse flew his L-39 into the aviation history books and he flew as if flying was all that mattered. Brad lived his life on the edge when raci...

Aviation - Really Part Of Our Lives
I often wonder how things affect the way I live. In particular something like aviation. We tend to think of it as a means of transport and of course...

How Bad is Products Liability Insurance Hurting General Aviation Manufacturers?
Currently so many general aviation manufacturers must burden the costs of increased liability from potential lawsuits. Even if an aircraft crash is pi...

Will The United States Lose Its Military Air Superiority?
Is it possible that the greatest Air Force in the world the United States Air Force in the greatest Navy in the world with the greatest aviation force...

2007 Trends in Aviation Technologies
The Future of Aviation Technology is accelerating like never before and is no cleared for take-off into a whole new paradigm of innovation, performanc...

Resistance Band Exercises - How Beneficial Are They?
The resistance band is an amazing product that has a very unique physical property which is known as variable elastic potential. Basically the way it ...

Cect A8+ Cell Phone, Another iPhone Clone From China?
CECT A8+, another so-called "Iphone Clone" from China, keeps the same compact and design of its predecessor yet manages to pack in even more features....

Educate Yourself In Aviation And Fly With The Birds!
Humans have been gazing at the skies, dreaming of leaving behind their earth-bound existences and joining the birds in a world which was, for most of ...

Airbus to Build $600 Million Aircraft Manufacturing Plant in US
Airbus has announced that it will build a $600 million aircraft manufacturing plant in Mobile Alabama. This is significant news and will open doors to...

Aircraft Manufacturers Insurance Costs and Defense Funds Against Lawsuits
Having been in the aviation business off and on all my life it seems unfortunate the extreme costs associated with general aviation aircraft and yet t...

Piper Aircraft Company Builds On Its Legendary History
Ever since I was a kid, I had the dream of one day flying a plane. Like other kids my age, I assembled model planes and proudly hung them from string...