The Gamer Jet Is Real! And It Costs $0

Tech for Change
4 followers
Apr 3, 2026
Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.
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So the April Fool's wasn't a joke,
we actually bought a jet.
What started as a meme on WAN Show,
when I discovered that a jet propelled aircraft
is not as expensive as I initially thought,
I'm serious.
Okay.
Even Luke was shocked.
So I started exploring various options
and my uncle's in aviation and has been for many years
on the pilot side, mechanical side and operation side.
Okay.
So when I started to explore that one aircraft
that I was like, this is shockingly affordable,
he did a bunch of the due diligence for me
and ultimately brought me two sales brochures
and he went, don't do this,
but if you're going to do this,
these are the two best ways you can do it.
Okay.
And I picked a Dassault Falcon 900B.
I have so many questions.
You and everyone.
When you say it's not that much, how much is that?
So because of the non-disclosure agreement
that we signed in order to purchase it,
this whole world is very closed door.
I can't actually tell you how much I paid,
but what I can tell you is that if you Google it,
it's less than that.
And the second thing that I can tell you
is that with a little bit of a girl math, $0.
I would have been crazy not to buy it.
There's no way it's $0.
Well, let me put it this way.
The engines were all on a service program
from the previous owner that entitles you
to completely refurbish them
to effectively zero hours brand new
once they reach end of life.
All three of those were done right before we purchased it.
It's effectively brand new from an engine standpoint.
Each of those refurbishments is worth anywhere
from 1.1 to $1.2 million.
Each? And there's three of them?
The jet was also in for a 12 year service.
And because my uncle's a shrewd negotiator,
he put together a purchase contract for us
where it was guaranteed
that once it came out of that 12 year service,
it was at Dassault specification.
That 12 year service effectively cost as much or more
than the rest of our purchase price.
So what you're saying is you got the plane for free?
So when I'm done with it,
with the condition that it's in,
with some of the special features that it has,
for example, it is one of the few 900Bs on earth
that has a medevac kit.
When it's time to divest of this thing,
I should be able to get back what I paid
and maybe even the bulk of what I spent operating it.
That's pretty cool.
See, you didn't know all this.
I didn't.
And I know that you were very opposed to the jet
in the lead up to this.
I was very vocal against it.
But the way that the math works,
it's a little bit of cashflow tied up,
but we're not actually spending any money,
which is so cool.
Do you want to see it?
I want to see the whole thing.
Well, you're going to have to wait for the segue
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Give me the quick specs.
How far can I go and how fast can it go?
It's a 1990, so it doesn't have the same kind of range
as some of the longer range Falcon 900s
that are newer,
but completely out of my price range.
But it'll still do about 4,000 nautical miles
on a full fill up.
So what that means is that from Vancouver,
we can go effectively anywhere
in the North American continent.
And if we were on the East Coast of North America,
we could hop across the Atlantic in one go
without having to like stop and refuel
at a little island airport.
On the subject of little island airports,
one of the coolest things about the Falcon
is that it's designed to land and take off
from relatively small airports.
So you only need a landing strip
that is somewhere in the neighborhood
of around 4,500 feet long
in order to land and take off.
Of course, that's all subject to weather conditions,
atmospheric pressure, wind.
Other planes.
I've definitely learned a lot
and it's way more complex
than you would even begin to think it is.
I already thought it was pretty complex to be very,
I'm like scared to touch this thing.
No, you can totally touch it.
You can fit so much fuel in here.
Did you know that's where the fuel is stored in an aircraft?
It's in the wings?
Yeah.
Cool, right?
I guess I don't know where else it would be.
That makes sense.
People are in there.
So it would be.
I assumed that jet fuel would be inordinately expensive.
It turns out that it's actually really similar to kerosene.
Okay.
And doesn't really cost that much more than regular fuel.
How much does it store though?
It's just the sheer volume of it that you go through.
Okay.
With that said, I'm starting a family vlog.
That'll be coming soon.
And the first episode is gonna be a trip to Cabo
where I treated mine and Yvonne's families.
When we factor in that the fuel coming back from Mexico
was half as much as we paid to go down.
Oh, whoa.
It actually cost less
than buying like a first class ticket for everyone,
which was kind of mind blowing to me.
I mean, first class, like let's be,
let's bring it down to earth here.
Yes, or not, but it wasn't much more
than even business class for everyone.
Got it.
Which blew my mind.
So the big savings are gonna be
when we're maybe doing a big company trip.
I mean, can I show you around?
Today's yours, let's do it.
Yeah.
Where are we?
What does this hold?
Do you wanna walk on the wing of a plane?
Can we both be up here?
Like how much weight?
Yeah, okay.
Okay, we can both come up here.
Okay, this feels so wrong.
I don't like this at all.
Oh my gosh.
You like it a little.
It's not as slippery as I would have thought.
I guess we would come up here for fueling.
There's, I never really thought about where the gas tank,
you know, is on a jet, but if the fuel is in the wing,
obviously the fuel port would be on the wing.
Does that mean there's another one on the other side?
I would assume so, yeah.
So you have to film both separately.
And both the same, so that the plane will be balanced.
In fact, on one of our recent flights,
Luke was talking to the pilots while they were flying
and they were explaining to him that
because in the grand scheme of things,
the plane is so light in order to optimize its ability
to carry passengers and cargo,
even small differences in weight distribution
have to be accounted for.
So they were telling Luke that him hanging around
with them up in the cabin
was actually negatively impacting fuel economy.
And if he went all the way to the back
and sat in the very back,
they would actually have to make adjustments to the throttle
in order to alter the pitch of the aircraft
just a little bit.
I assume that scale is different
if you have a bigger jet versus smaller planes, right?
Yes, but even then.
Got it.
These are finely balanced machines.
You change one bit of furniture inside
and you've got to submit that.
You've got to get that certified.
And like potentially recalibrate.
You've got to account for that.
Got it.
Okay, wow.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah.
So here's the emergency exit from the outside,
which I've never seen.
I've never looked in the outside of a plane.
This feels so weird.
I had a lot of people ask me like safety.
It was one of the big questions.
And I was like, look,
Lance would not allow me and my entire family
and Yvonne and her entire family
to get on something that's not safe.
Sure.
We are doing everything as scrappy as we can.
We've got a great deal on this hanger.
Like seriously, shout out these guys.
We'll link to their business in the video description.
So we're doing it scrappy,
but we are not compromising at all on safety.
Now that we've made a safe landing.
Okay.
I feel it was a good time to talk about this.
Whoa.
Another major maintenance cost center on aircraft
is the landing gear.
So rough landings, total landings, and time,
all contribute to how often this stuff
needs to be overhauled and checked.
Well, guess what?
As part of my girl math $0 plane,
all three were completely redone months ago
as part of a 12 year check.
I'm talking the whole plane goes up on struts
or on donor landing gear.
They completely take apart the whole thing.
New seals, new everything, new anti-skid,
make sure everything's working perfectly
and they throw it back on.
So once again, when we go to divest of this asset,
business term for flip this.
Someone is basically buying a turnkey ready to go 900.
Ever, ever looked up inside of the landing gear?
No, no, no.
Believe it or not,
I've never had the opportunity to do that.
It smells exactly like I would expect it to.
It smells mechanical.
It's also like less complicated
and as complicated as I expect.
Hey, want to see the first thing that I broke on it?
Yeah.
The good news is it wasn't this.
That'd be.
It was like the second night after it arrived
and we hadn't shown the kids
or any of my family members yet.
So I was like, oh, you know, do you want to come see it?
And they were like, heck yeah.
And as part of just kind of poking around at it,
I was like, okay, I don't know.
Do you want to like,
do you want to like check out the baggage compartment?
Except there was only one small problem.
The plane wasn't powered.
So after I opened this,
which it turns out to close needs like a powered winch,
there was no way to close it.
And in the baggage compartment was all the documents
and paperwork for the plane.
Now that might not sound like that big of a deal.
Let me put it this way.
Okay.
It's about a pallet of bankers boxes this high.
And the way my uncle explained it to me is see that pallet?
That's half the value of the plane.
You don't have that.
There's no history for this bird.
Oh.
Nobody's going to want to touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Cause if they can't see all the service history
or any of the maintenance, any of that stuff.
So they were all in here.
So leaving this open in a shared hangar,
not really an option.
Had to call my uncle who was doing flight training
for this plane.
So you can have all the experience in the world.
You still have to get certified for weeks
on an individual airframe.
Okay.
He's in the middle of class.
I'm like, Hey, so the thing's open.
He goes, Oh my God.
How could you?
Okay.
So here's what you have to do.
We had to hook up like the emergency power battery
or something like that in the butt of the plane.
It was a whole ordeal.
Anyway, the point is we want to go in the cargo hold.
It's not the first time a millionaire has asked someone that
sorry, I don't include that joke.
That's a billionaire thing.
Okay.
That doesn't make it in.
Go to floatplane.com.
Subscribe for the extras.
I mean, he can go on it, right?
Yeah.
You're good.
Maximum weight, 220 pounds.
Go ahead.
I'll go on it.
Yeah, you go in.
This wide angle lens makes it look a lot bigger than it is.
I can't even stand in here
and I can touch both ends with my arms.
So it's about a three foot by three foot by three foot.
Yeah.
So how do we close this thing now?
Well, okay.
Does it not just have like a fob, like a car?
Oh, baggage door closing.
When we were there that night and I had to close it,
it made an awful noise.
Okay.
And I was probably pretty sure I broke it.
Hey Lance, when I opened it, when you were in training,
did it, did I damage it?
No, that's not true.
Okay, so I didn't.
I didn't.
So did you, do you know the nickname for the plane?
No.
It's the Millennial Falcon.
Did we actually tell people
what the name of the jet was though?
That isn't.
No, the public one of like.
Oh, you mean the company?
Yeah, are we allowed to disclose that?
Okay, it's called Influence Air.
No, it's pronounced Influence Air.
Now I know what you're probably thinking.
Hey kid, she looks nice from the outside,
but what you got under the hood of that thing?
Is she a Hemi?
No, she's not.
Whoa.
Hold on, I'm going to try and do it.
It's stuck.
Lance, help me.
How can you make something so simple, so complicated?
Okay.
Whoa.
What the hell am I looking at?
Okay, so this is our weather radar.
What this is our navigation computer,
all of our communications.
What you're hearing is a cooling fan.
In 1990, the rudimentary compute that was in here
was a pretty big deal.
And while you can retrofit this
with more modern computer systems,
it's one of those things like bedazzling your jacket.
You're never going to get your investment back on it.
Got it, okay.
Can we swap those fans out for Noctua ones though?
No.
All right.
And oh, cool, hey?
Welcome, sir, to Influence Air.
Thank you.
Oh, wow.
Dude, this is dumb in the best way possible.
Right?
So are you ready for a bomb?
Well, not in a plane.
You can't say that.
A truth bomb.
Oh.
Would you like to know
who the original owner of this plane is,
who is responsible for the gold-plated ashtrays
and gold-plated sinks?
Hold on.
I'll let you see it first.
Okay.
That's so...
Oh my goodness.
24 karat on that, baby.
Is it actually?
Yeah, plated.
Oh, I thought you were...
Okay, I thought you were joking.
No.
Is this like Trump's plane?
This plane has had a few owners,
but originally it was owned by the government
of the United Arab Emirates, allegedly.
So this is what I've heard.
This is what I've heard.
May or may not be true,
but that is my understanding of the origin of this aircraft.
So they asked for some special modifications
to be made as part of its production.
Like gold sinks.
Like a gold sink.
Okay, so that's that.
Do you want to sit in the cockpit?
I was waiting to ask.
I just didn't want to interrupt.
I'm going into the cockpit.
Holy cow.
I'm a pilot.
Well, not really.
I shouldn't claim that.
Is that right?
Yeah, definitely not really.
So above you is a bunch of fuses and stuff.
And also a panel that has caused
what was probably the most expensive issue
that we've had so far with this plane.
Okay.
See, one of these screws was a little bit too tight
and was shorting out.
Oh.
So that caused the illumination
behind all these gauges to go out.
So we were able to fly, but only in daytime.
We were like replacing power supplies
and doing all this stuff until we finally found,
well, hold on.
What if we back one of these out an eighth of a turn?
And that was it.
That was what saved it.
That's the kind of stuff that from talking to Lance,
you run into after a 12 year check.
This thing was taken down to studs.
Would be the building equivalent.
Okay.
Every bolt removed, cleaned, checked for corrosion.
So when you put it all back together.
You might have some mishaps like that.
A couple of little things like that, yeah.
Any idea where you'd even begin to use any of this stuff?
I'm assuming this is go forward.
That is go forward, yes.
I assume this is a steering wheel.
Sure.
Or are you, you say that like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a steering wheel.
Okay.
Up here is all of your relevant flight gauges.
This would be our weather radar.
Then these screens right in front
are the actual flight displays.
Also up here is our parking brake
and our super high tech compass.
Getting out of here.
Guys, the next time you see like a six foot five pilot,
you just like, I don't know,
give them a thumbs up or something
because I don't know how they get in and out of these seats.
These are the best seats in the house.
This was another one of the things that made this
a much better deal than it otherwise would have been.
Remember I said the deal is that we get it in
factory approved condition, right?
Sure.
Well, part of that was the mechanisms for these chairs.
These go forward, backward, side, side, and turn
so that you can face the people in these chairs over here.
How much you wanna guess
that mechanism under the chair is worth?
Don't forget that it is aviation certified,
which...
More than 10,000?
5,000 per chair.
Okay.
And it was two or three of them were broken.
Okay, so I was right about 10 grand.
And we found so many little things like that.
Sure.
That again, you know, girl math,
when someone comes and looks at this thing,
they're gonna look at it and go, wow, okay,
this is like babied.
Like everything is in working condition
because we were like on it.
And this fix was still part of that original...
You better believe it, bud.
They found one seal that was like a fraction
of 0.1 millimeter out of spec.
My uncle pulled up the documentation.
He said, no, it's not.
You signed to fix it, so...
So we got it fixed.
Okay.
Safe.
The costs add up for these things,
which is why I was so hesitant on it
because, you know, there's a saying, right?
If it flies, floats, or you're supposed to rent it.
Yeah.
These are fun.
Almost every seat has a little table,
which is kind of nice.
Pull out the laptop, get a little bit of work done.
Sammy, I think got like almost a whole float plane video
edited on this at one point.
I have a question about that.
Yes.
Wi-Fi.
We have Wi-Fi.
Okay.
How does it work?
Well, you take a whole bunch of money.
Okay.
And you give it to someone.
Okay.
And then you get fantastic Wi-Fi.
How much is a whole bunch of money
and how fantastic is fantastic?
Thousands of dollars a month.
And fantastic is like kilobytes per second.
And it's spotty.
So aviation Wi-Fi is moving from land-based towers
that you just fly over and then get out of range
and grab the next one.
I see.
And like I said, the speeds and everything is spotty
to obviously low earth orbit satellites.
Got it.
However, whether you're talking Starlink
or whether you're talking about GoGo's Galileo,
it has to be certified for your particular airframe.
And then to even get the hardware installed
is probably going to be in the neighborhood
of 200 to 400,000 US dollars.
And then the monthly is not going to be any cheaper.
So we're not going to do that.
I am leaning away pretty heavily.
What else is there to show you?
This is fun.
These four seats convert into a bed.
Oh, what?
Yeah.
I'm not going to show it to you
because the mechanism involves this table
lowering down on this like accordion thing here.
That was really loud.
Anyway, this is cool.
Oh, whoa.
There we go.
Then you just put in the leaf
and if you give it a little shove.
Oh, okay.
We've had as many as like half a dozen people
playing cards around here.
Now, this is interesting.
In here, you will find a high tech
three and a half millimeter jacks.
And now in practice in flight,
there's a lot of like background noise.
So it doesn't sound amazing.
You're way better off just putting in your headphones.
But one of the things that Lance said was,
hey, while it was in for that 12 year check,
we should look at getting it sound treated.
Cause that is something that carries some value
and is something that makes a big difference
to the experience.
And then if you looked into it,
it turns out it already had like state of the art
sound treatment.
So it's actually quite comfortable to be in.
I guess I have one more question.
Oh yeah.
If you're talking about like a whole cabin sound treatment,
can we wrap the plane?
No.
Sorry, I knew the answer.
It was just like the number one Reddit comment
when people found the jet.
I'd love to, it'd be so cool.
You'd be adding so much weight in vinyl
that it would affect the fuel economy.
And also the heating and cooling cycles,
the expansion and contraction of the airframe.
It's not worth it.
Naturally, this is the best place to have a meeting
if you're to do it here.
Oh, there you go.
And it's magnetic.
Oh.
So this is probably the most comfortable place to sleep.
You've got the privacy curtain
and you've got the ability to,
there.
Okay.
So if you were gonna have a nice little sleep,
this would be the place to do it.
And then I think there's some kind of like,
there's like a thing in here.
Yeah.
Ah.
That you can pull out.
Oh, whoa.
And I think this like can go in the middle
and then you can have a little mattress thing or something.
You can turn this whole thing into like a giant bed.
Oh, wow.
I don't know.
I don't care about that.
Okay.
I don't need to have an orgy in the back of the plane.
That's for the front of the plane.
That's for the ones with a B, not an M.
Okay.
This is something I actually want to fix.
So see how there's a little kind of crack at the top.
Yeah.
That's for good reason.
Because if you were to open this,
it would wing here.
So this piece has to slide up and down
depending on whether it's open.
It doesn't open all the way.
And I feel like that's the kind of thing
that one of our very smart people,
like, you know, Justin or Sebastian
could probably help fix.
It's actually really loud in flight.
Because this is open to the,
we've come full circle.
Oh, that's the cargo hold.
Baggage.
Okay.
You can go in there now.
It's not that big, hey?
You're very right.
It's actually quite small.
Man, you made this look huge though with your height.
Oh my God.
Wait.
So is this another bathroom back here?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
That's another toilet there.
Yeah.
Cool.
What about second gold-plated sink?
What is this?
What is this Canadian curling boop?
Okay, I can explain that.
Please.
We've had some issues with this little plunger here.
See, normally it's sealed.
Yeah.
And you push it down to drain it.
And there's suction.
So on the last flight,
I forgot whether it was push or pull.
And they had glued the little thing on the top
and they had used a pretty crappy glue, honestly.
I don't think that's entirely on me.
So I forgot if it was push or pull and I pulled it
and the thing came off.
So now there's a label and a boop.
Is two bathrooms really needed on a jet this big?
Because you can have up to, including crew,
like 17 people in here.
Two people may need to use the pooper at the same time.
Got it.
Well, if you guys ever need to do a trip again
and you just need to, you know, you're at 15,
you need 17 or whatever, 16.
My wife and I would love to join you.
Okay, all right.
I'll keep that in mind.
But of course we'd have to have a meeting
when we get there though.
Absolutely.
And a meeting on the plane if we really need to.
About important things.
Yeah.
Shh.
Come on.
Give us some privacy here.
We're trying to have a meeting.
Oh, hold on.
I got this.
Oh, you know what else I've got?
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
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We're running a huge promotion on the store right now.
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Medallions, challenge coins.
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And it's a fun video.
