Private Air asks the world’s most luxe yacht and plane designer to help it get a little carried away.

It may come as a surprise to you (it certainly did to some of us when we first got here), but Private Air doesn’t have its own plane. Between the company’s sale to an on-the-go New York publisher and a major redesign, though, we had a good enough year to take another look at that situation. So we gave the guys back in accounting a couple of options. The first was 25 hours on a Marquis Jet card. Then there was the one you might call the “blue sky” option.

You can see the design above. It’s the work of Andrew Winch, of London-based Andrew Winch Designs. Winch was the perfect chap for the job: A designer who originally made his name designing yachts, he began turning his attention to planes a few years ago when a customer kept coming back to ask if he could refurbish their plane to match their yacht. Since then he’s worked on a handful of projects, including one for a Middle Eastern sultan, another for a Russian plutocrat . . . so why not his favorite aviation magazine?

“I’m looking at the practicalities first,” he says of his modified 737. (You should have heard the howls in accounting when we passed that comment along.) “I tried to keep the interior cool and uncluttered, with clean lines emphasizing the overall shapes.” Characteristically, he made ample use of “multi-function” space: Sofas convert to beds; a lounge and party area work just as well for editorial meetings or sales calls. He also included a space-age tube shower because “there’s nothing better than taking a shower before you get off the plane.”

Our favorite touch (aside from the jaunty tail decal), though, might be the distinctive cross-hatching on the hull. In fact, it was such a hit that when accounting sent back its swift rejection of our $100 million (give or take) hallucination — er, proposal — they suggested that perhaps we consider adding it to our popular Private Air ball caps instead.

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