Robert L Frank: Richistan

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She flew Roth in her jet to a specialty-wood warehouse in Indiana, where they spent eight hours picking through stacks of lumber. Finally she found the perfect piece — a satiny burr madrona. The trip cost $30,000, not including the wood.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were more pragmatic about their choice in private jets. The 30-something multibillionaires, who drive environmentally friendly hybrid cars, bought a Boeing 767 wide-body airliner to fly themselves and their friends around the world. The jet, originally designed to hold 224 passengers, was to be retrofitted for a maximum of 50 people.

When asked why they needed such a huge plane, Larry said they were motivated by practical concerns. The plane, after all, probably cost under $15 million — one-third the price of a much smaller Gulfstream 550.

“We tend to have an engineering approach, to be fact-based,” Page told The Wall Street Journal. “We looked at this and we just did the economics and we said, ‘You know, it makes a lot of sense.’?”

Such pragmatic extravagance didn’t seem to apply to the plane’s interior. Among other amenities, the Google guys wanted hammocks hung from the ceiling. Sergey and Larry bickered over whether they could both have California king-size beds onboard. And at one point during the renovation, according to the designer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “It’s a party airplane.”

Still, Brin insisted that the private wide-body is fully in keeping with Google’s mission to improve the world.

“Part of the equation for this sort of machinery is to be able to take large numbers of people to places such as Africa,” Page told The Wall Street Journal. “I think that can only be good for the world.”

Sales of private jets are skyrocketing. Purchases of new private jets totaled $13 billion in 2005, up from $3.3 billion in 1995. Jet makers like Gulfstream, Bombardier and Dassault sold 750 planes in 2005, more than twice as many as in 1995.

Prices are also rising with demand. The most expensive Gulfstream in 1995 was the $27 million G4. Now it’s the $47 million G550. Gulfstream’s “entry-level” jet, the G150, now goes for $13 million. But if you want to buy one, get in line. The waiting list for Gulfstreams is now two years long, and some buyers are selling their “slots” on the Gulfstream waiting list for up to $1 million to more impatient buyers. Used Gulfstreams are also becoming scarce.

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