As The Masters teed off on Thursday at the rarefied Augusta National Golf Club, at the small regional airport 11 miles away, hundreds of private jets were undertaking their annual pilgrimage to the billionaires’ favorite golf tournament.
On Thursday, nearly 300 aircraft arrived at the Augusta Regional Airport, about five times the typical number of arrivals and departures combined, according to data from FlightAware.
The aircraft, many registered to charter and fractional ownership companies like NetJets and VistaJet, came from tony locations, such as Palm Beach, Florida, and Hilton Head, South Carolina.
To prepare for the influx this year, the airport, which charges as much as $4,000 per aircraft to land, hired additional staff, increased the number of fuel trucks, and expanded aircraft parking, according to a letter sent to aircraft operators.
“It’s organized chaos to us,” Lauren Smith, the Augusta Regional’s assistant director of marketing and public relations, told Business Insider ahead of last year’s tournament, during which third-party flight tracking data showed more than 2,100 private flights flying in and out of the airport.
The Masters, along with the Super Bowl and Formula 1 races, is one of the biggest events of the year for private jet operators, who use the golf tournament to market and mingle with their wealthy clientele.
NetJets hosts an annual party with A-list entertainment, and Wheels Up, which booked over 150 flights to and from the tournament last year, opens a clubhouse for its members, where golf personalities record live podcasts and a fashion illustrator captures guests’ outfits.
VistaJet rents a private home nearby and hosts its members for programming, including dinners, live entertainment, and visits from golf insiders.
“We give them something they never want to get rid of,” Matteo Atti, the chief marketing officer of VistaJet’s parent company, Vista Global, told Business Insider of his company’s membership perks last year.
The Masters is a premier event on the billionaire social calendar. In past years, the jets of Nike CEO Phil Knight and investor Herbert Allen Jr. have made the trip.
While official tickets to the Masters, given out through a lottery system, are relatively inexpensive — $160 per day, at most — they are hard to come by. Though the tournament prohibits reselling tickets, they are available on resale sites, where they cost exponentially more. In the days leading up to the event, resale passes were going for upward of $50,000.
Once you’re through the door, though, rest assured that your food won’t cost much. The price of the tournament’s famous pimento cheese sandwich hasn’t budged in years: $1.50.
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