China’s HNA Group seeks buyer for US$300 mln ‘Dream Jet’ – Sources
HONG KONG: Cash- strapped Chinese conglomerate HNA Group has put up for sale its luxurious US$300-million-plus Boeing 787 corporate ‘Dream Jet’ with registration ‘2-DEER’, say six aviation industry sources familiar with the matter.
The 40-seat jet, used for charters as well as by top HNA officials, recently carried Cambodian president Hun Sen to the UN General Assembly in New York and undertaken flights between Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, and Beijing, on dates coinciding with a visit to China by President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
Under pressure from Beijing, aviation-to-hotels group HNA has in 2018 sold real estate, stakes in overseas companies and aviationrelated assets after a US$50-billion acquisition spree in recent years.
It could prove difficult to attract close to the purchase price for the 40-seat plane, due to the limited market for widebody private jets, which are usually bought by governments or billionaires who prefer to select their own interior design, two of the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
A 787-8 business jet has a list price of US$232 million, but the interiors typically cost US$ 90 to US$170 million, according to Boeing.
The interiors of the HNA jet, registered as ‘2-DEER’ in Guernsey, dubbed the ‘Dream Jet’ and featur- ing a 17-hour non-stop range, took 2.5 years to complete, according to the website of HNA’s wholly-owned private jet division Deer Jet.
“A lot of the large aircraft have to go for two-thirds of the (original) price or half the price because whoever buys it will have different thinking on interiors,” one of the sources said. “Nobody is going to spend that money and sit in somebody else’s bed with a different cushion. They want what they want.”
Some of the fittings are by designers such as Baccarat and Fendi, according to a Deer Jet tweet in 2016. A brochure for charter clients seen by Reuters calls 2-DEER a “flying home” with 26 lie-flat beds.
The jet was put on the market in late July, after the death of HNA Co-Chairman Wang Jian in an accidental fall in France, said another source, adding that Deer Jet’s Beijing office is open to serious offers and has not assigned a jet broker. — Reuters