Who has the most expensive private jet in the world?

The question hides two markets that should be kept separate. On one side are airliners converted into flying residences: Airbus sells the ACJ family (A319, A320, A330neo, A350) and Boeing the BBJ (737 MAX, 777X, 787). These aircraft leave the assembly line as commercial airliners and then spend years in a completion center that installs bedrooms, offices and bathrooms with showers. The last price list Airbus made public, from January 2018, put the A350-900 — the airframe behind the ACJ350 — at $317.4 million; the interior is contracted separately and on wide-bodies can exceed one hundred million dollars. Neither Airbus nor Boeing publish catalog prices anymore, so any later figure comes from market estimates.

On the other side is the business jet designed as such from the first blueprint. There, the top reference is the Bombardier Global 8000, unveiled in 2022 with an announced price of $78 million, closely followed by the Gulfstream G800 and the Dassault Falcon 10X.

No buyer pays the sticker price. Large operators negotiate volume discounts, and at the VIP extreme the price depends on decisions that appear on no list: extra fuel tanks, armor plating, encrypted communications systems or finishes in fine materials. Head-of-state aircraft, funded with public budgets, are also accounted for with the cost of the entire mission, not just the aircraft.

A private wide-body needs a permanent crew, a hangar, scheduled maintenance and fuel consumption several times that of a light jet. The annual operation of an ACJ or a BBJ runs into several million dollars even if it flies few hours, which explains why many owners end up preferring a conventional long-range jet.