You Can Now Sleep In A Retired Private Jet For Less Than A 5-Star Hotel

Flying private usually requires a net worth with a lot of zeroes, a charter membership and a thick skin when it comes to carbon emissions. On an industrial estate on the outskirts of Bristol, England, there’s a far cheaper way to tick it off the list, provided you don’t mind that the plane isn’t going anywhere.

It’s called PytchAir, and it’s a 1960s Boeing 727 that local entrepreneur Johnny Palmer has turned into a 1,000 square foot short-stay rental, perched on a stack of shipping containers and running off its own solar and wind micro-grid, according to CNN Travel, which spent a night on board.

The aircraft has had quite the life. It first flew in 1967 and joined the Japan Airlines fleet a year later, before being converted into a private jet for the seriously rich in 1981. It then spent three decades ferrying high flyers around until it was retired in 2012.

Palmer found it sitting in an aircraft boneyard in the west of England and did what any reasonable adult would do. He bought it.

With the wings and engines removed, the fuselage was trucked down the motorway to Bristol in early 2021. He originally used it as a party and sleepover space for his kids, and once the novelty wore off he listed it on Airbnb and Booking.com.

Inside, the whole thing has been preserved in peak 1980s excess. There are two lounges, a main bedroom with a king bed, an ensuite with a shower, a full kitchen and a liquor cabinet that actually comes stocked. Outside you’ll find a hot tub and a sauna, which is more than you’ll get on the Qantas red-eye.

The real drawcard though is the flight deck. Guests are free to sit in the captain’s seat and flick every switch and button they like, for as long as they like, which explains why the place has become a magnet for aviation tragics.

One recent guest was a working pilot who brought his son along to teach him the controls, something that would get you frogmarched off a plane that was actually airborne.

Palmer runs the place on a trust system. His only real rules are don’t steal anything and don’t stain the carpet, and by his account guests mostly behave themselves.

He’s also refreshingly upfront about the location. The listing photo deliberately shows the jet surrounded by shipping containers with a wheelie bin in the foreground, so nobody rocks up expecting a private terminal at Farnborough.

It isn’t perfect. The fit-out is genuinely 40-odd years old, likened to hunting for the right light switch in an escape room, and there’s no air conditioning, so summer stays come with two large fans pointed at the bed. Palmer says a hidden cooling system that pumps cold air through the original vents is in the works.

The mattresses, incidentally, are the originals. Palmer kept them because they’re so comfortable, though he admits he has no idea how old they are. The bedding, thankfully, is new.

Then there’s the Pablo Escobar thing. Bookings spiked after several outlets reported the jet once belonged to the Colombian drug lord, a story Palmer says traces back to a Reddit post before somehow making its way onto Wikipedia. He can’t completely rule it out, but reckons it’s a textbook case of the internet turning nothing into fact.

It’s not the only retired airliner to get a second life as a landmark, either.

Down under, John Travolta’s old Qantas 707 finally made it home after two months at sea, while Palmer has already parked a second 727, dubbed Ground Force, at the same Bristol site.

Rates start at around £250 (roughly A$475) midweek and climb to about £500 (around A$950) on weekends, with Christmas pushing past £1,000 (about A$1,900). Palmer says he deliberately prices it below Bristol’s high-end hotels so families with plane-obsessed kids can actually afford it.

Considering what it costs to own or charter the real thing, and the new wave of tech money now buying private jets, that’s a bargain. You won’t earn any frequent flyer points, but you won’t cop any turbulence either.