Rumours, legends and things people swear are true
Every private-jet story you have heard at a dinner party — the gold-plated 747, the $3,000 biscuits, the jet that outclimbs a fighter — checked, and labelled honestly.
“Fractional owners share one specific jet with a few other people.”
On paper, yes: you buy a 1/16th or 1/8th share of a specific aircraft with a tail number, and that's what you own for tax and legal purposes. In practice, you almost never fly on it. NetJets, Flexjet and their peers operate a pooled fleet and send whichever aircraft of your category is nearest — that's the entire point. The 'one specific aircraft' is a legal fiction with a registration certificate.
“NetJets is owned by Warren Buffett.”
NetJets has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway since 1998, when Buffett's company bought Executive Jet Aviation for $725 million. So it is owned by the company Buffett ran, and he was a customer before he was the owner — he bought a share in 1995 and has said the purchase was sparked by his family's enthusiasm for it. Buffett stepped down as Berkshire CEO at the end of 2025; the ownership didn't change.
“Boom is bringing back supersonic travel by 2029, and private supersonic jets are next.”
Boom's Overture is an airliner — 64–80 seats, for airlines such as United and American — and the company's own schedule targets certification and entry into service in 2029, a date independent analysts widely expect to slip into the 2030s. Boom's XB-1 demonstrator did go supersonic in January 2025, a real milestone. But a supersonic *business* jet is not on Boom's roadmap, and the one company that was building one, Aerion, collapsed in 2021.