How Much Does a Jet Card Cost? Rates, Fees and the Real Number

Published rates: how to read the table

New to cards? Start with how jet cards work. The table on this page shows only rates that providers publish themselves, labelled "Primary source" or "Provider-stated", with the date we read them and whether the 7.5% federal excise tax is included.

Compare rows within one aircraft category. Rates found only in trade press appear separately as "Reported rate", named and dated, and never feed the calculator.

Of the providers we compare, 4 of 13 publish a card hourly rate on their own sites: Fly Alliance, Magellan Jets, Sentient Jet and Wheels Up. The rest show "Not published (checked 2026-09-25)", which, as our methodology puts it, "says nothing about whether the provider offers it; ask the provider". Some price another way: NetJets publishes a starting price per card, XO fixes each trip's price when you accept its quote, and Paramount Business Jets adds a management fee, set by tier, to the operator's cost.

What "starting at" means

Read a "starting at" rate as a floor, not a quote for your trip. Magellan Jets lists 25-hour rates "starting at" $7,500 an hour for its Light Category card up to $16,650 for its Gulfstream G450/G550 Premium card, without saying whether FET is included (Provider-stated, 2026-10-02; checked 2026-10-04). Its pages give different 50- and 100-hour rates, so we show none for those tiers until they agree.

Fees: what can sit outside the hourly rate

Ask each provider for its full fee schedule in writing; the examples below are what providers publish (read 2026-09-25).

How a membership fee changes the rate you really pay

A fixed fee weighs more per hour the less you fly. To compare programs fairly, spread each year's fees over the hours you expect to fly and add the result to the rate: blended rate = hourly rate + (annual fees ÷ annual hours).

Hypothetical example, round numbers, not any provider's price: Card A charges $8,000 an hour and no fee; Card B charges $7,700 an hour plus a $5,000 annual fee.

Card B's fee pays for itself at about 17 hours ($5,000 ÷ $300 saved per hour). Estimate your realistic hours first, because the structure that wins at 50 hours can lose at 10, and put minimum-time charges into the same sum.

From headline rate to effective cost

The effective hourly cost is what the invoice works out to per hour in the air. Taxes, contract add-ons and billing rules push it above the headline rate. Provider terms below were read on 2026-09-25.

Federal taxes

US law taxes the amount paid for taxable air transportation of persons at 7.5% (26 U.S.C. §4261(a)), the federal excise tax (FET). For 2026 the domestic segment tax is $5.30 per domestic segment (one takeoff and one landing), multiplied by the passengers on a chartered aircraft and not charged to or from rural airports; international flights beginning or ending in the US generally carry $23.40 per person (IRS Instructions for Form 720, rev. 06/2026).

Contract add-ons

• Fuel surcharge. Fly Alliance, Magellan Jets and Jets.com say fuel is in the rate (Primary source). NetJets includes fuel up to a per-gallon cost set in the contract (Provider-stated); Wheels Up adds a surcharge on flights it operates when Jet A on the Argus US Jet Fuel Index tops $2.00 a gallon (Primary source, SEC filing).
• Rate lock. Published periods during which the rate cannot change include 12 months at Sentient Jet and 24 months from deposit at flyExclusive (Provider-stated). Ask how renewal pricing is set, including any escalator, a clause raising rates by an index; see what rate-lock and fuel clauses cover.
• Peak days. These are dates a provider lists as high-demand. Jets.com adds 10% to flight time on its peak days, while Fly Alliance's FAQ states "no peak-day surcharge" (Primary source, 2026-09-25). More in how peak days affect fees.
• Repositioning. This is flying an empty aircraft to or from your trip. NetJets charges no ferry fees inside its service area, the contiguous US and select Canadian cities (Provider-stated); Wheels Up lists positioning among charges outside the contiguous US (Primary source).
• De-icing and international handling. Fly Alliance bills both at cost; Jets.com includes de-icing and adds 25% on eligible international flights (Primary source). More in jet card pass-through fees such as de-icing.

Billing rules

Taxi time is ground time added to each billed flight: Wheels Up adds 6 minutes to each takeoff and each landing, while Jets.com bills takeoff to touchdown only (Primary source). A daily minimum is the least time billed on a flying day; Nicholas Air's is 1 hour including taxi (Primary source).

Two worked examples (hypothetical)

These are hypothetical estimates with round numbers, not any provider's price. Assumptions for both: base rate $8,000 an hour; fuel surcharge $500 an hour of billed time; 12 minutes (0.2 hours) of taxi billed per flight; 7.5% FET on the whole flight charge; $5.30 segment tax per passenger; no fees and no repositioning.

What 25 purchased hours actually deliver

Card hours are debited as billed time, which can run longer than time in the air. The round-number examples below are hypothetical; provider terms were read on 2026-09-25.

• Taxi time. Magellan Jets quotes estimated flight time plus 6 minutes before takeoff and 6 after landing (Provider-stated). At 12 minutes a flight, twenty one-hour flights would use 24 of your 25 hours.
• Daily minimums. Under a 1-hour daily minimum such as Nicholas Air's (Primary source), a lone 30-minute flight uses a full hour, so 25 such days would use the whole card for 12.5 hours in the air. Magellan Jets lists no short-leg waivers at 25 hours, four at 50 and eight at 100 (Provider-stated).
• Round trips and one-ways. Round-trip discounts lower the cost of qualifying trips: up to 15% at Sentient Jet, and 10%, 15% or 20% by tier at Magellan Jets (Provider-stated). Where repositioning is charged, you also pay for flying you are not on.

Estimate your own effective cost

The calculator applies each program's published terms to your inputs: hours a year, typical flight length, category, share of peak-day flights, region and block size. It adds FET (switchable), published fuel surcharges, fees spread over your hours, weighted peak surcharges, daily minimums and taxi time, labelling each addition.

Where a component is unpublished, the result reads "at least" that figure and lists the exclusions. It leaves out segment and international taxes, repositioning, de-icing, cancellations and any discounts, never uses reported rates, and lists programs without a published rate as "quote required". Every result is an estimate from published terms as of the date shown: your contract governs.

What a lower rate can trade away

A lower headline rate is not a better card on its own. These examples from the published terms we compare show what can sit behind one.

• A bigger prepayment. Wheels Up's fixed light-jet rate falls from $9,295 on a $200,000 Fund, its prepaid balance, to $8,695 on $1 million (Provider-stated, 2026-09-25). More of your money then sits with the seller, so check how prepaid funds are protected.
• Price certainty. Wheels Up's dynamic plan shows $9,088 an hour for a light jet against $9,295 on its fixed plan, but the dynamic figure is a three-month average less a Fund discount, and dynamic rates vary by flight (Provider-stated, 2026-09-25).
• What the rate covers. Sentient Jet's $7,324 light-jet rate adds a fuel surcharge of unstated amount and FET (Provider-stated, 2026-09-25). Fly Alliance's $7,650 light-jet rate includes fuel, with FET extra (Provider-stated, 2026-09-25; inclusions: Primary source).