Jet Cards

Jet Card Pricing Starts at $7,324 an Hour Before Tax

Only one major program publishes a full rate card

Published jet cardA prepaid block of flight hours on a set aircraft category, bought at a fixed or capped hourly rate. No aircraft ownership is involved. pricing starts at $7,324 an hour for a light jet. At Jet & Beyond, we track what each program puts on its own website, and the rate card is the smaller half of the story.

Sentient Jet is the one major provider that lists a full set of hourly rates and 25-hour block prices. NetJets publishes a single starting figure for its Card. Everyone else quotes on request. Both published figures exclude a fuel surcharge, and one of them excludes the 7.5% excise tax as well, so the number a block bills out at is higher than either rate card shows.

What Published Jet Card Pricing Looks Like

Four programs handle price disclosure three different ways: a full rate card, a single starting figure, and nothing at all.

Two of those entry figures look comparable and are not: $183,100 is a base rate with tax and fuel still to come, and $215,000 is described as covering all standard fees.

The Sentient Jet Rate Card, Cabin by Cabin

Sentient Jet publishes a base hourly rate and a 25-hour block price for every cabin size it sells, which no other major program does.

Three published terms come with those numbers. The rate is locked for 12 full months from purchase, so a card bought in March holds its price through the following March. Purchased hours never expire, which is unusual in a market where 12- to 24-month use-it-or-lose-it terms are standard. Qualifying round trips earn up to a 15% efficiency discount. Sentient does not publish whether that comes off the rate or the hours debited, so ask which before you sign.

Sentient states on the same pricing page that a fuel surcharge and Federal Excise Tax apply on top of every figure in that table. Treat the rate card as a floor.

What NetJets Publishes for Its Card

NetJets lists one number for the NetJets Card: it starts at $215,000 for 275 days of annual access, and one set price includes all standard fees. That figure sits on the company’s own jet card cost comparison page, next to a leased Share that starts at roughly $225,000 a year for 25 hours and 355 days of access.

NetJets does not state on that page how many hours the $215,000 buys. Its Card program page says the Card is prepaid 25 hours at a time, and that availability is guaranteed on as little as 48 hours’ notice. The published contract terms are a 24-month window to fly the hours, and hours that terminate at the end of that contract rather than rolling forward. For what that $215,000 starting figure actually buys per aircraft category, including light-jet types like the Phenom 300, and whether it is worth it against the alternatives, see our NetJets cost breakdown.

Why Two Headline Prices Are Not Comparable

$183,100 and $215,000 measure different things, and reading them side by side produces the wrong ranking. We most often see readers compare a base rate against an all-in rate. Our NetJets review covers the mechanics behind that Card figure in more depth, including how the 275 days of access actually works in practice.

The Sentient figure is a base price with a fuel surcharge and 7.5% excise tax still to come. The NetJets figure is described as one set price covering standard fees. Before you can rank them you have to gross the base rate up, then confirm in writing what the inclusive number includes on peak days and repositioning legs. Two written quotes on the same two trips settle it in an afternoon, which no published rate card can do.

What Gets Added to a Base Rate

Four line items sit between a published rate and the invoice, and only one of them is fixed by law.

1. Federal Excise TaxA 7.5% US tax on domestic air transportation, charged on top of the quoted charter price. It does not apply to flights that begin or end outside the continental US.. Domestic air transportation carries a 7.5% tax under 26 U.S.C. §4261. On a $183,100 block that is $13,732.
2. The domestic segment fee. The IRS set it at $5.30 per passenger per segment for 2026. A family of four on a two-leg trip pays $42.40 before anyone boards.
3. The fuel surcharge. Sentient and most of its rivals apply one, and none of them publish the formula. Ask what index it tracks and how often it resets.
4. The daily minimumThe minimum number of flight hours an operator bills per day regardless of how long you actually fly. Commonly two hours, which makes short hops expensive per mile.. Most programs bill a minimum number of hours per flight day. On a 45-minute hop to a nearby field, a two-hour minimum means you pay for 2 hours and fly 0.75.

The first two are arithmetic you can run yourself. The last two are contract terms, and they move a real bill further than the rate spread most buyers agonize over. How a block draws down against those terms is worked through in our jet card membership guide.

What 25 Hours of Light Jet Time Costs After Tax

Take the published light-jet card and add what the law adds. The block is $183,100. Federal Excise Tax at 7.5% brings it to $196,832. Fly 12 round trips over the year with two passengers, and 48 segment fees add $254. You are at roughly $197,100 before the fuel surcharge, or about $7,884 an hour.

That is a 7.6% gap between the number on the rate card and the number before a surcharge nobody publishes. It is also the number to compare against a charter quote, because a charter quote for the same trip carries the same 7.5% and the same segment fee. Our cost hub lines card pricing up against on-demand charter and outright ownership on the same per-hour basis.

Pricing a 50-Hour Jet Card

No major program publishes a 50-hour price. Doubling a published 25-hour block gives you arithmetic rather than a quote. Two Sentient light blocks would be $366,200 at the same rate, and providers routinely price larger commitments below their entry rate.

Ask for the 50-hour figure directly rather than extrapolating. The answer is useful even before you buy. A program that will not improve on its 25-hour rate for twice the money has no spare aircraft to sell you.

A published 100-hour price is even rarer than a 50-hour one. The single published 100-hour figure in the market comes from Jettly, which lists a 100-hour card at $95,000 alongside a $12,997 one-time enrollment fee. That is a dynamic-booking membership rather than a guaranteed fixed-cabin block like Sentient’s, so the two cannot be compared directly.

Other Jet Card Providers

Several regional and specialized flight programs sell cards that depart from the traditional 25-hour fixed-cabin format.

Flyers researching this market often look at day-based access instead of hourly blocks. Airshare sells a Jet Card based on 10 travel days a year, providing unlimited flight hours within a 14-hour crew duty day on each travel day. Airshare also sells its EMBARK card, which guarantees 10 usage days a year (equivalent to a 1/32 fractional share on its fleet) for a minimum commitment of 10 days a year or 20 days over two years. The EMBARK card bills an annual fee plus an hourly rate for hours flown, while Airshare’s core fractional ownership program starts at a 1/16 share for 20 program days.

Other niche operators publish fixed rates or tiered deposits for specific fleets. Airly sells its ACCESS program on four-seat light jets at an all-inclusive published rate of $3,995 per occupied hour, with no separate charges for positioning legs or overnight stays, and included catering and fixed-base operator (FBO) lounge access where available. Thrive Aviation, an operator based in Las Vegas, launched a fixed-rate card program in 2025 requiring 48 hours of notice. Thrive sets three tiers by deposit size: Ascension at $150,000, Elevation at $300,000, and Apex at $500,000, with unused funds refundable less a 15% restocking fee. For higher flight commitments, Jettly publishes fixed tier rates of $50,000 for 50 hours, $95,000 for 100 hours, and $160,000 for 200 hours, plus a $12,997 enrollment fee, with hours that do not expire under a dynamic-booking model.

Three other names that appear in card searches are either restructured or no longer exist. Flexjet sells its card product as Flexjet 25, a prepaid 25-hour program built for flyers using about 25 hours a year that drops the monthly management fee of a fractional share, though Flexjet quotes pricing only on request. Air Partner no longer sells jet cards under its own name, after Wheels Up retired the brand and folded its American and international operations into the Wheels Up brand in 2026. Marquis Jet, founded by Jesse Itzler and Kenny Dichter to sell 25-hour cards on NetJets aircraft starting in 2001, was acquired by NetJets in 2010 and fully retired by 2021 as sales shifted into the NetJets Card. Quote-on-request pricing remains the market norm outside Sentient’s published sheet, so the same standard applies: get an all-in, written quote for two of your specific trips before committing funds.

Who Should Not Shop on Published Jet Card Pricing

If you fly under about 25 hours a year, none of these numbers should decide anything. A card commits six figures to hours you may not use inside the contract term, and on-demand charter prices the same cabin without the commitment. Our jet card versus charter versus fractional breakdown runs that crossover at real usage levels, and our cheapest way to fly privately guide covers the lower-commitment options below that threshold.

If you fly one route repeatedly, the published rate is also the wrong lens. Repositioning and daily minimums on a short, fixed pair of airports can swamp a 5% rate difference. Price two of your real trips instead.

What Would Change These Numbers

Three things would move this page. A second major program publishing a full rate card would make cross-provider comparison possible without requesting quotes, which no amount of arithmetic fixes today. A sustained fuel move would reset the surcharges that sit outside every published figure here. And a change to the 7.5% rate or the segment fee in 26 U.S.C. §4261 would change the gross-up on every block in the tables above.

Rates also change without notice. Before you wire anything, confirm the current figure on Sentient’s pricing page and request written all-in jet card pricing from two providers on the same two trips. Crew gratuities are a separate line from any of this. Our private jet etiquette guide covers tipping norms once you’re actually flying.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a jet card cost?

Published jet card pricing runs from $183,100 for 25 hours on a light jet to $341,000 for 25 hours on a large-cabin jet. Those come from the Sentient Jet rate card, the only full set of rates a major program publishes. A fuel surcharge and 7.5% Federal Excise Tax apply on top of both figures. NetJets publishes one starting price for its Card, $215,000 for 275 days of annual access, and describes that as one set price including standard fees.

What is the hourly rate for a jet card?

Sentient Jet publishes $7,324 an hour for light jets, $9,434 for midsize, $11,529 for super-midsize and $13,640 for large cabin, each locked for 12 months from purchase. Those are base rates. Add 7.5% excise tax, a $5.30 per-passenger domestic segment fee, and a fuel surcharge whose formula is not published, and the effective light-jet rate lands near $7,884 before the surcharge.

How much is a 25 hour jet card?

A 25-hour light-jet card is published at $183,100 by Sentient Jet, which works out to $196,832 once the 7.5% excise tax is added. Twenty-five hours is the standard block across the market: NetJets sells its Card by prepaying 25 hours at a time, and Flexjet 25 is built for flyers expecting about 25 hours a year.

Do any jet card providers publish their prices?

Sentient Jet publishes a full rate card covering four cabin sizes with both hourly rates and 25-hour block prices. NetJets publishes a single starting figure for its Card. Flexjet and Nicholas Air describe their program structures without listing rates, and quote on request. Every published figure excludes the fuel surcharge.

Why is jet card pricing so hard to compare?

Providers quote on different bases. One publishes a base rate with tax and fuel to be added, another publishes an inclusive figure covering standard fees, and most publish nothing at all. Two numbers that look close can differ by more than 20% once the daily minimum, peak-day surcharges and repositioning terms are applied to a real trip. Written all-in quotes on two of your own trips are the only comparison that ranks programs correctly.

We update this guide as aircraft, program, and route pricing changes. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we'll check it.