On Saturday, they were seen at Bondi’s Icebergs Dining Room and Bar with Hollywood producer Brian Grazer and his wife, Veronica, as well as Capital Group portfolio manager Carl Kawaja. Grazer, whose films include Splash, Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, also accompanied Bezos on a Sydney Harbour Bridge climb.
Lauren wears a plunging tank top to enjoy lunch at Bondi's Icebergs with Jeff
Billionaire Jeff Bezos and wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos spotted sightseeing in Sydney
Bezos’ whirlwind visit: How do the rich and famous get to the beach so fast?
On a 43-hour visit to Sydney, every hour matters. That’s why Jeff Bezos’ flying trip to Australia would have likely taken him – and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos – through the rarefied confines of the airport’s executive terminal.
Bezos’ $114 million Gulfstream G700 jet appears to have departed Sydney on Sunday at 8.10am, heading back across the Pacific. It had landed on Friday at 1pm, before a flurry of dinner meetings and unofficial appearances.
How did Bezos land and appear at a restaurant near Coogee beach a mere hour later? He was likely helped by an expedited process for his arrival, a process reserved for truly global VIPs.
The uber-wealthy often use a private luxury terminal known as a fixed-base operator to enter and leave a country, which is separate from a city’s main airport terminal commonly used by the masses of flying travellers. Sydney Airport’s fixed-base operator, ExecuJet, would not confirm if Bezos had used its facility.
At such terminals, the process is very different to the queues and self-service machines that greet weary travellers at an international terminal. Typically, an Australian Border Force officer will walk onto the parked private jet after it has landed to inspect passports, verify identities, and process declarations, speeding up entry.
Nearby, a motorcade will idle on the tarmac, waiting to transport the VIPs and avoiding the need to enter the public terminal. Ground crew have direct access to the plane to unload luggage to their vehicle.
Bezos is likely to have used a similar service to swiftly get to a local restaurant in beachside Coogee.
Melbourne-based Events Travel general manager George Hedley said a high level of wealth shaped the sort of travel undertaken by billionaires.
The most wealthy can afford to travel great distances in a short amount of time. They typically take trips for business reasons and work on their trips, while mixing in small amounts of leisure.
“They have the budget, and they can afford to travel for very short trips,” Hedley said. “The super-wealthy can do something randomly for two to three nights” – such as fly across the Pacific for a short Sydney visit.
A Friday to Sunday trip to Australia from the United States wasn’t uncommon for the super rich whereas lower-status billionaires, or simply wealthy people, would book a full week’s vacation or more, Hedley said.
ExecuJet is separate from the VIP rooms in Sydney’s T1 international terminal which are used by a few select passengers on commercial flights subject to security and government requirements, Sydney Airport says.
Among other things Bezos did on his short visit, he spent Friday evening at the Park Hyatt bar, had dinner on Saturday at the Icebergs restaurant, and did a climb of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post. He has an estimated net worth of about $US260 billion ($372 billion). The billionaire’s executive Gulfstream jet arrived from Vanuatu.
The Gulfstream G700 has one of the longest cabins of an executive jet, measuring more than 17 metres.
Depending on its configuration, it can carry up to 19 passengers, sleeping up to 13, according to the Gulfstream website. It has four living areas.
As Forbes recently noted: “One might occasionally spot a billionaire in commercial first class, but private travel has largely become the standard for this demographic.”
Bezos’ outbound destination after leaving Sydney was not immediately clear. His plane has a maximum range of 14,353 kilometres, putting the west coast of the US and much of Asia within striking distance.
The billionaire founder of Amazon and would-be SpaceX rival Blue Origin has emerged as one of the faces of the globe-trotting ultra-wealthy class in a time of widening inequality.
