Private Jet Palo Alto to Gilbert

Palo Alto Airport, a compact general aviation field at the heart of Silicon Valley, is the starting point for the 565 nautical mile run down to Gilbert, Arizona. The airport’s modest runway length and its proximity to residential neighbourhoods make it best suited to turboprops and very light jets, with a Pilatus PC-12 or Phenom 100 comfortably covering the distance in around two hours at a cruise altitude in the high 20,000s. The route crosses the Central Valley, the Mojave Desert and the Colorado River before arriving at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, a spacious former military field that handles general aviation traffic well away from Sky Harbor’s commercial ramps. For a certain kind of technology executive, this leg has become almost a commuter route, linking Silicon Valley’s engineering and venture capital base to the semiconductor and advanced manufacturing plants that have expanded rapidly around Gilbert and neighbouring Chandler in recent years, several of them built or backed by companies headquartered a short drive from Palo Alto Airport itself. Others travel the route purely for the change of pace it offers, swapping the Bay Area’s fog and rising costs for the dry heat, larger properties and lower taxes of the East Valley. Gilbert’s own transformation from agricultural community to a town of several hundred thousand residents, with a restored Heritage District now full of restaurants and boutiques, gives visitors a reason to linger beyond the boardroom. Because Palo Alto Airport keeps operating hours and noise restrictions that larger jets cannot always accommodate, the smaller aircraft best suited to this route also happen to be the most practical, offering a flexibility that a scheduled connection through San Jose or San Francisco simply cannot match for a traveller on a tight, self-set schedule.