On-demand charter
You pay per trip and own nothing. No fixed costs, no crew to employ, no asset to sell at the end. You take whatever aircraft is available, you pay for positioning, and on a busy weekend in a busy region you may not get one at all.
It is the right answer below roughly fifty hours a year, and it stays competitive a great deal higher than most owners expect.
Jet cards and block hours
A card buys hours in advance at a fixed rate, with guaranteed availability inside a notice period. You are buying certainty of price and access rather than an asset. The cost sits above pure charter and below ownership. The value is in the terms: the notice period, the blackout dates, the positioning policy and what happens to hours you do not use.
Fractional ownership
You buy a share of a specific aircraft and receive a set number of hours a year across a fleet of that type. You pay a monthly management fee and an occupied hourly rate, and you exit at a contractually defined value after five years.
It suits fifty to a hundred and fifty hours a year. Examine the exit closely. The share is bought back at a formula price, and the gap between that formula and the open market can be substantial.
Full ownership
You own the aircraft and carry everything. Crew, maintenance, insurance, residual value. In return you get complete control and complete availability, with the aircraft configured and crewed the way you want it.
It makes financial sense at high utilisation. It makes sense on other grounds at almost any utilisation, if control and privacy matter enough. Placing the aircraft on an operator certificate to sell the unused hours changes the arithmetic, at the price of more wear, less availability and a more complicated life.
A broker who recommends full ownership before asking how many hours you fly is not advising you. They are selling.
常见问题
- Is it better to charter, buy a share or own outright?
- It follows from the hours you actually fly and from how much you need the aircraft to be yours. Below roughly two hundred hours a year the arithmetic usually favours charter. A broker who recommends full ownership before asking how many hours you fly is not advising you, they are selling.
- What is fractional ownership?
- You buy a share of a specific aircraft and receive a set number of hours each year, with a management fee and an hourly rate on top. You get guaranteed availability without running an aircraft yourself, and you accept the programme terms on exit and on what your share is worth.
- What is a jet card?
- Prepaid block hours on a class of aircraft at a fixed hourly rate, with availability guaranteed within a notice period. It removes the quoting cycle of on demand charter, and it costs more per hour than the cheapest charter you could find for the same leg.
- How many hours a year justify buying an aircraft?
- There is no single figure, because it depends on the type, the country and the crewing. What is reliable is the method: divide the all in annual cost by the hours you fly, and compare it against chartering the same aircraft. Do that before you choose a type, not after.