767-300 The world's most expensive private jet

Mr Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who owns Chelsea football club, has taken delivery of a pricey new jet: a £56-million (S$173-million) Boeing fitted out like a flying palace.

The Times of London said aviation experts believe that, royal families aside, he is now the owner of the world’s most expensive private jet.

Twenty years ago he and his fellow Soviet citizens had to make do with Ilyushin airliners with basic comfort and a bad safety record.

But now they have come a long way.

His Boeing 767-300 aircraft originally had room for 350 passengers and the paper said he has spent at least £10 million on equipping the interior alone.

This excludes a missile-jamming device, similar to the ones which protect US President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One, which cost another £800,000.

There’s also a ‘zonal comfort’ air-conditioning system imported from Sweden which ensures perfect humidity.

The sum he paid is £10 million more than what actor John Travolta, star of Grease and Pulp Fiction, spent on a Boeing 707 from Qantas Airlines of Australia.

The Russian billionaire bought the plane from Ansett, an aircraft-leasing company that had planned to sell it to Hawaiian Airlines, The Times said.

The plane was flown to Filton airfield near Bristol to be painted in Mr Abramovich’s livery. It was then sent to Jet Aviation, an aircraft completion specialist in Basel, Switzerland, to be customised.

Mr Abramovich, now likely to see a rival Russian tycoon, Mr Boris Zingarevich, face him as a rival Premiership club owner with his bid for Everton, has banned anybody from discussing his new acquisition.

Jet Aviation refused to acknowledge that it had ever seen the aircraft but photographs of ‘a recently completed Boeing 767’ have been posted on its website, The Times said.

Air Abramovich is fitted out with a dining room where he and fellow passengers – up to 30 – can dine by candlelight on food prepared in an adjoining kitchen with gold-plated sinks.

There is an office panelled with marquetry more reminiscent of czarist palaces than passenger planes.

There are Faberge-style egg-shaped ornaments dotted around the plane.

Fresh flowers bedeck a carpeted bedroom with a large double bed. Elsewhere, there are plasma screens to watch in-flight movies.

The expense does not stop there.

Aviation economists believe the plane will cost him at least £100 per 1.6km to fly in fuel and other expenses if he has it on 24-hour call and reserved for his personal use.

A return trip from Moscow to London would cost £300,000, 1,500 times the cost of the cheapest Aeroflot return fare of £200.

But with a personal fortune put at £7.5 billion in The Sunday Times Rich List, making him the richest man in Britain, Mr Abramovich has enough money to fly around the world every day for 17 years.

The airliner has a range of 11,200km, can stay in the air for 14 hours and has one of the best safety records.

It puts to shame the two Ilyushin presidential jets that Russian President Vladimir Putin inherited from former president Boris Yeltsin.

Only potentates such as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who has a Boeing 747 jumbo jet equipped with a fountain, or the Sultan of Brunei, who travels in a 62m Airbus 340, travel in more style, The Times said.

Mr Abramovich has registered his plane in the Netherlands, but it is expected to be based in Moscow or at Anadyr airport in Chukotka, Siberia, where he is governor.