Private Jet Flyers Face More Choices, Deals And Fine Print In 2023

As we ended 2021, more than a dozen private jet providers had put their guaranteed availability, fixed-rate jet card and membership programs on hold, including Sentient Jet, inventor of the jet card and NetJets, the world’s largest operator of private jets, which declined to renew even existing customers. The move to stop or slow sales came as demand for private jet flights hit record levels and providers struggled to fulfill contracted flights.

Jet card, membership and fractional ownership programs typically guarantee customers aircraft at a fixed or capped hourly rate so long as they book a specified number of hours or days in advance. After operating in a market where since the 2008 Great Recession, there had been a surplus of jets available for charter, the demand surge put these providers in a bind, hence the moves to stop selling.

A year later, most of the major players who put their programs on hiatus are either back or have introduced offers that don’t offer pricing commitments to customers. For example, Vista Global’s XO eliminated its fixed-rate Elite Access membership while expanding its dynamic pricing offers. However, what’s true of all the private flight options is that more than ever, the devil is in the details, with contracts that can go on for dozens of pages of fine print.

One common denominator is price, in that hourly program rates continue to increase. Private Jet Card Comparisons, which tracks over 50 providers and over 250 fixed-rate, guaranteed availability programs, found year-over-year hourly private jet charter rates increased to $11,748 across all aircraft types. Compared to their low point, at the end of 2020, when the CARES Act removed the 7.5% Federal Excise Tax, hourly rates are up 39.8% on average.

Since many jet cards provide rate locks, typically 12 months, and a few providers offered CARES Act deals that froze rates on deposits for 24 months or even until funds ran out, many consumers who are in the shopping mode again are facing sticker shock. Increased prices are cited by 62% of private jet flyers as the top reason for looking to switch programs.

However, hourly pricing is merely the tip of the iceberg if you are in the market to fly privately. Depending on what your needs are, the solutions are going to be different Here’s what you need to know:

I want to save money

There is good news for those of you who want to fly privately – but on a budget. There are more shared flight options, with prices between New York and South Florida starting at under $1,000 per seat thanks to JSX, which has expanded from its West Coast Network east to Colorado, Texas and Florida. At the same time, XO has tripled capacity on its by-the-seat flights between New York and South Florida with as many as six flights per day. Last week it added a Palm Beach-Farmingdale, Long Island route, while start-up Aero recently added flights from LAX to Los Cabos.

These shared flights don’t give you an entire private jet, and some operate with aircraft configured more like traditional first-class seats on domestic airlines, however, they do offer you the time savings of being able to check in as little as 20 minutes before departure, avoid long TSA line and crowded airport terminals since they use private facilities, and perhaps best of all, would seemingly make it harder to lose your luggage. A downside is you are flying on a set schedule, and there are still limited routes and frequencies, although both XO and Wheels Up, among others enable users to crowdsource flights.

For those of you looking for cheap options to charter a full airplane, start-up HondaJet operator Volato recently introduced prices based on availability good for up to four passengers on some key routes, including Los Angeles to Las Vegas for $6,000 and New York to Miami for $12,000.

I take shorter flights

More good news. In addition to hourly rates, a big factor in what you pay on fixed-rate programs is Daily Minimums. The Daily Minimum is the least flight time you will be charged for, so if your program has a Daily Minimum of 120 minutes on light jets, your 45-minute flight will still be charged as if you were in the air for two hours. Overall, Daily Minimums dropped from a Q2 2022 high of 109.3 minutes to 94.7 minutes in Q4 2022, although still higher than the pre-Covid low of 86.2 minutes in Q4 2019. The result was the cost of shorter flights dropped by 8.8%. For Light Jets, the most used size of private jet, Daily Minimums were down to 75.8 minutes in Q4 2022 from 104.0 minutes in Q2 2022 and in line with 78.1 minutes in Q4 2019.

I take longer flights

Well, here the bad news starts. At the end of 2020, more than a half dozen programs offered deep discounts for coast-to-coast flights or, in some cases, flights over 3.5 hours on super midsize and even large cabin jets. In several instances, that meant flight prices starting at less than $30,000 between New York and Los Angeles, so in other words, around $5,000 per hour, about a 40% savings over regular hourly rates. While there are still a few programs that offer a better value, you’re still looking at around $45,000 coast to coast, meaning if you want a deal, you probably have to shop for empty legs or get on-demand charter quotes, which also can mean paying extra for deicing, or losing no-cost recovery if the operator cancels your flight.

I fly to the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada

Another place fixed rate programs have been trimming what they offer is for flights outside of the Continental U.S. This can be a big surprise to customers who may use the perk only once a twice a year and missed the email notice that those flights are now price dynamically, which means factoring in repositioning costs. The good news is there are still nearly two dozen jet card programs with fixed one-way pricing that includes the Caribbean, Mexico or Canada and a couple of providers that have added Hawaii. At the same time, VistaJet, which offers the widest global coverage with one-way pricing, dropped the entry point in its membership to just 25 hours per year, although it still requires a three-year commitment.

I’m not flexible on travel dates

One of the benefits of flying privately is flying when you want. You set your own schedule. That said, when you are buying into a program, there are peak days when you fly by a different rule set. You must book or cancel further in advance. There are also surcharges, which can be upwards of 50%. However, one of the biggest downsides of peak days is providers can move your departure time by +/- three hours for the most part, although some programs at entry levels give themselves the ability to accelerate or delay your flight by as much as eight hours. While the average number of Peak Days per year settled at 55.7 days at the end of 2022, that’s still more than double the average of 22.8 days in Q4 2019. In other words, for those of you who must fly around school holidays, it will be harder to avoid peak days.

What does it all mean?

More flyers are finding it harder to find a single provider who fits all their needs. A program that works well for flights between New York and Florida may not work well for flights to the Caribbean or short hops to Nantucket.

I always recommend asking potential providers to give you a copy of their contract. That’s because much of what you find in the glossy brochures and slick websites omit the details on how fuel surcharges are calculated, daily minimums, how many peak days, and so forth.

The good news is as demand has decreased, I am seeing more offers of bonus hours, flight credits and even reduced buy-in levels. The bad news is as programs are becoming more nuanced, what you will end up paying for your flights is getting more complicated.