A year ago, Nebraska Athletics launched a novel transportation arrangement they hoped would pay off in efficiency and in landing top recruits. It is now February 2020—how did it turn out?
I’ll grant you, Lincoln, Nebraska is in the middle of the country. It’s 53 miles from Omaha, Nebraska; it’s 226 miles to Kansas City, Kansas; it’s 188 miles to Des Moines, Iowa; it’s 520 miles to Chicago, Illinois. While I’m sure the drive is scenic and enjoyable, it takes a long time to get somewhere. So flying makes sense.
Bill Moos, athletics director at Nebraska, wanted to open up the recruiting landscape to his new head coach. With roughly 2 million residents in the Husker State (and fewer football players), Moos wanted head coach Scott Frost to be able to reach far flung recruiting hot beds like Florida, California, Ohio and Texas easily and quickly. He came up with Husker Air.
Husker Air relies on the private planes fully owned and fractionally owned by donors to the Husker Athletics Program. Donors, in exchange for their aircraft, receive a tax deduction. Those who purchase jet cards, where they buy hours on a private charter, may also donate those cards to the University. Finally, donors can elect to give funds directly to the Nebraska Foundation specifically for chartered air travel for coaches.
Moos described it to Journal-Star this way: “we need to be in those high schools where the Ohio States, Alabamas and Clemsons are recruiting. If we’re expected to get back into that kind of race, we have to have those kind of players. The Husker Air Fleet is going to be important.”
Nebraska Athletics shared the following parameters with HuskerOnline.com regarding how benefactors can assist the Big Red:
*Private planes that meet aircraft, maintenance, pilot and insurance standards.
*Flight hours, such as through fractional ownership or jet card hours. Fractional ownership costs include the number of hours flown, but also some recurring costs of owning a share of a small jet. In general, a jet card allows more of a pay-as-you-go service, without many of the other partial ownership costs.
To give you a general idea of the cost, 25 hours of flight time on a private jet ranges from about $145,000 to $165,000 plus taxes and other fees, according to industry data. Read More
