Private Flies

Hey kids! Here's a fun database to peruse: It's the Federal Aviation Administration's aircraft registration database.

By clicking on the "Name" search button, you can see what kind of private aircraft your favorite corporate fat cats have at their disposal. For example, enter "New York Stock Exchange," and you'll find that up until his resignation, Richard Grasso had at his beck and call a Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV and a Cessna 750, and boy don't you bet he wasn't tempted to hop one of those and fly to Brazil last week!

I tried, just for the hell of it, Wachovia Bank, and damned if they don't have nearly 300 planes at their disposal, enough to form an air force for a lot of countries. Amazing that even in this day of instantaneous electronic financial transfers and video-conferencing, they still need all those planes. Maybe some people just like their cash delivered to their estates in person?

Losing your job? Perhaps you're one of the, say, 3000 International Paper layoffs announced last week. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the company's fleet of five planes will stay intact.

And are you sure you want to buy a General Motors car when you know that its executives travel around in a fleet of 22 planes?

Anyway, plug some names of your own in and have a little fun.