Costs, Jet Cards
and Empty Legs

Because of positioning. If the aircraft is not based at your departure airport it has to fly there empty to collect you, and after dropping you it usually returns to base. Those legs are real flying and they are in the price, which is why a trip that starts where an aircraft already sits can cost noticeably less than the same trip from a field an hour away.

Only if your flying is frequent and repetitive. Cards buy rate certainty and guaranteed availability in exchange for money committed up front, which suits someone flying similar missions regularly. If your routes and party sizes vary, or you fly occasionally, booking each trip is usually cheaper because the aircraft is matched to the trip rather than to a fixed category.

Many prepaid programmes bill a minimum number of hours for each flying day. On a card with a two-hour daily minimum, a fifty-five minute leg is billed as two hours. It is the single most common reason a card underperforms expectations, because it quietly penalises exactly the short hops that look most convenient.

Flight hours are time in the air. Block time adds taxi at each end, commonly around twelve minutes out and twelve minutes in. Ask which one you are billed on, because nearly half an hour per rotation can be billed before the aircraft has left the ground.

Not always, and it is worth asking explicitly. On United States domestic flights, and within 355 km of the border, Federal Excise Tax of 7.5 percent applies, and only about a third of United States card programmes quote rates inclusive of it. Fuel surcharges and non-preferred FBO fees are usually in the contract rather than the headline rate.

The United States has a large fleet, high operator density, extensive secondary airports and cheaper fuel. Europe adds slot restrictions, higher airport and handling fees, crew duty limitations and possible VAT exposure. Two flights of identical duration in the two regions are not comparable quotes.

The threshold most often used is around 300 flight hours a year. Above it ownership starts to make financial sense. Below it chartering is usually cheaper, because the purchase price is only the beginning: maintenance, fuel, crew salaries, parking, insurance and depreciation all run whether the aircraft flies or not.

They are genuinely cheaper and genuinely unreliable. An empty leg exists because another client's trip created it, so it moves when their trip moves. If your dates are firm, treat an empty leg as a bonus rather than a plan, because a late change can leave you buying the full round trip instead.

One to three months gives the widest choice of aircraft, the timings you actually want and the better end of the pricing. Most charters can still be arranged in 24 to 48 hours, so booking early is about choice rather than possibility. For European summer, major holidays and event weeks, leave two to four weeks as a minimum.

Because a published figure is wrong for most readers. The same route changes price with the aircraft available that week, where it is based, the season, the airport and the taxes that apply. We explain what moves the number, and quote a real figure against your actual dates and stops.