Stage 1: What must go into the mission brief?

Write the travel requirement before choosing an aircraft. Your first deliverable should be a brief that different suppliers can price without making different assumptions.

Mission checklist

• Record every leg, travel date, local departure window and latest acceptable arrival at the final destination—not merely the airport.
• Identify preferred airports, acceptable alternatives and ground-transfer endpoints.
• Record passenger numbers by leg, baggage quantities, approximate weights and dimensions, and unusual equipment.
• Separate essential cabin and boarding requirements from preferences.
• State whether fuel stops, aircraft changes or an earlier departure are acceptable.
• Identify the consequence of missing the deadline and who can approve a fallback.
• Name the organiser, budget approver and person authorised to accept changes.
• Give the brief a version number so later quotations can be matched to it.

How do you establish aircraft suitability?

Ask the operating carrier to confirm the proposed aircraft against the complete brief. Published performance figures have assumptions: for example, Textron’s Citation CJ4 Gen2 product card states that performance uses standard-day, zero-wind conditions and that its range figure is based on a ferry mission. That is not the same as your passenger-and-baggage mission. (cessna.txtav.com)

Request written confirmation of the intended cabin configuration, baggage-loading suitability, expected stops and airport feasibility, subject to final operating conditions. If a replacement aircraft is proposed, repeat the mission-fit check rather than accepting the category name alone.

How should finance compare private with commercial?

Use three separate columns:

1. Cash expenditure: fares or charter price, transfers, hotels and other evidenced costs.
2. Schedule outcome: departure, destination arrival, meetings possible and overnight requirements.
3. Assumed time value: any internal valuation of traveller time, explicitly labelled as an assumption.

Do not deduct a notional executive-hour value from the invoice and call the result cash savings. If commercial travel meets the requirement, retain it as a genuine option.

Exit criterion: the organiser and approver agree what the trip must accomplish, and suppliers are quoting the same brief.