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Warren Buffett, Airlines Hasn’t Always Been a Successful Marriage

Warren Buffett

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Suffice it to say that Warren Buffett has had a love and hate relationship with airlines.

His NetJets fleet of private jets for the world’s elite is flourishing, and that airline could be moving major parts of its operations to North Carolina.

However, Buffett certainly will never forget the $385 million investment he made in US Air. In 1995, he wrote off 75 percent of that investment during one of the many upheavals that make airline investments adventures into the unknown.

Back in ’95 in an interview with UNC TV, Buffett pointed out that the airline business in the U.S. “has made no money.”

Thanks to Wilbur and Orville Wright and their adventures on the Outer Banks, North Carolina is known as “first in flight.” But Buffett didn’t let that history stop him from making a sarcastic remark about investors’ attitude toward the Wrights.

“If there had been a capitalist down there, the guy would have shot down Wilbur,” Buffett said. “One small step for mankind, and one huge step for capitalism.”

The US Air debacle didn’t stop Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway company from buying NetJets in 1998. Up until that time, Buffett owned a private jet. Even billionaires don’t need a jet on a full-time basis, he said, so he now uses NetJets for everything from short flights to international overnighters.

Janet Lowe, who recounted many stories about Buffett in her book “Warren Buffett Speaks,” noted that he has fallen in love with the NetJets concept.

“Once you’ve flown NetJets, returning to commercial flight is like going back to holding hands,” Buffett wrote in the 2006 annual Berkshire Hathaway annual report.

Maybe it’s a good thing now that no capitalist was on the Outer Banks the day the Wrights took man into the wild blue.

The Skinny

WRAL Local Tech Wire Publisher and Editor Rick Smith dishes out tidbits from the local technology sector. Read more articles…