Most large companies lease corporate jets for their executives to travel. Executives are usually too busy to wait with us in the airport lounges :-). Nowadays, with fractional purchase programs, a company can lease or purchase a share in a jet and have a plane ready wherever they need, for a very economical price.

Another reason they do this is so that the executives can comply with a corporate "always fly coach" policy... they get around it by never flying commercian and having a choice!

I have it on very good authority (from the limo service driver who recently picked me up from the Seattle airport) that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer almost always fly corporate jets from Boeing Field. Apparently, Bill once flew commercial in the last year and there was a big picture of him holding a newspaper over his face in Fortune or some such magazine.