Vancouver 🛫
Shanghai 🛬#Canucks take flight with a swanky #AirCanucks en route to China. pic.twitter.com/hVwadRrmvC— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) September 18, 2017
Canadian hockey players fly like freakin’ royalty in ultra-luxe jet
Oh, (to be a hockey player in) Canada!
It appears the Vancouver Canucks just dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly from the Great White North to China on a private jet. The NHL team is playing two preseason games against the LA Kings in Shanghai and Beijing on Thursday and Saturday.
The Crystal Skye “air cruise” jet, launched last year by Crystal Cruises, is a luxuriously tricked-out Boeing 777.
A vessel of its size typically holds about 350 passengers, but this one only accommodates 88 — in fully-reclining flatbed seats. There’s also an onboard dining room and full bar, tended to by butlers and an executive chef.
While a Crystal rep said in an email it would not “disclose pricing for our private charters as this is proprietary information,” a 16-day round-the-world trip with Crystal with overnight stops in multiple cities starts at $69,500 per person.
“I’m not usually jealous of the planes that these sports teams charter, since they’re rarely all that luxurious,” writes aviation and frequent flyer-mile expert Ben Schlappig on his site One Mile At A Time. But he calls Crystal Skye “the latest and greatest plane in the mega-private jet world.”
Sure enough, the ride was sweet. Canucks goalie Anders Nilsson, defender Erik Gudbranson, defender Ben Hutton, center Bo Horvat, defender Troy Stecher, center Joseph LaBate and center Sam Gagner all posted photos and videos of their in-flight experience to their Instagram stories, according to screenshots captured by Vancouver site Daily Hive.
The players enjoyed a staggering snack spread, a bar stocked with top-shelf liquor (like Moet chilling in an ice bucket) and decorations of freshly cut flowers, including orchids.
The Canucks reportedly leads the NHL in terms of air miles traveled. The team has its own private plane, but apparently that wasn’t sufficient for this jaunt.
The players, clearly, had the flight of their lives. Unfortunately, the baller ride didn’t bring them luck in their Thursday game: they fell to the Kings 5-2.