Private Jet Membership: What Every Program Costs vs Booking On Demand (2026)

Membership · 21 min read

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By Pat Sinnott, Founder of Peak Aviation Solutions in Bozeman, also on LinkedIn. Commercial multi-engine rated pilot with a BS in Flight Operations and Aviation Management, 21 years in aviation, who has overseen thousands of flights and helped grow Summit Aviation’s flight department from one airplane to 21.

Last updated: September 3, 2026

Six private jet membership programs move through the Bozeman ramp regularly: NetJets, Flexjet, Sentient Jet, flyExclusive, Wheels Up, and Jet Edge. I know a handful of the people stepping off those airplanes, and a few times a year one calls me for a trip their program handles badly, the supplemental lift it cannot cover.

Not weekly, not monthly. I say that up front because the honest version of this comparison is not “memberships are a rip-off.” These are serious companies with serious products, and for the right flyer they are the right buy.

What I can give you is the thing none of them publishes: every program type’s real 2026 private jet membership cost in one table, the formula I use to compare them, and the utilization math that decides which column you belong in.

Private jet memberships come in four types with published and trade-reported 2026 entry costs: jet cards at $183,100 to $215,000 for 25 light-jet hours; deposit memberships at $100,000 to $200,000 plus dues; fractional shares from $220,000 to $695,000 plus monthly and hourly fees; and empty-leg plans from $15,000 a year. On-demand charter requires no deposit at all.

What is a private jet membership, and how is it different from a jet card or a share?

A private jet membership is any program that takes money up front, as a prepaid card, a refundable deposit, a share purchase, or an annual fee, in exchange for defined access to private aircraft at contracted rates and rules. Here is the taxonomy I use with clients.

• Jet cards: prepaid hours, usually 25, at a fixed hourly rate for one cabin class, with guaranteed availability inside a callout window. NetJets, Flexjet, Sentient Jet, Magellan Jets.
• Deposit memberships, sometimes sold as private jet membership clubs, a private jet club membership, or private jet charter membership: a refundable or drawable fund, often $100,000 to $200,000, plus dues, though a few charge none, with flights sold on dynamic pricing or a fixed plan. Wheels Up, XO, Jet Linx, flyExclusive’s Jet Club.
• Fractional shares: you buy 1/16 or more of a specific aircraft, fly 50 or more hours a year on that type, and pay a recurring fee, usually monthly management but sometimes a daily or annual access fee, plus an occupied hourly fee, for three to five years. NetJets, Flexjet, PlaneSense, SkyShare.
• Empty-leg and flat-fee plans: an annual fee for standby access to repositioning flights or discounted seats. SkyShare OpenJet, Blade’s Airport Pass.
• By-the-seat services: no membership required at JSX; you buy a seat on a scheduled semi-private flight.

Each solves a different problem and is priced around that problem, which is why comparing them by hourly rate alone fails.

How much do private jet memberships cost? The cost of private jet membership by type

This private jet membership comparison uses published prices and dated trade-press reports for every program, plus Peak’s own quote history for the on-demand line, because these numbers move several times a year. NetJets alone repriced in January 2025, said no to fuel surcharges in April 2026, and limited new card sales in late July 2026.

Type	Program (example)	Up-front	Recurring	Hourly rate	Key rules	Source and date
Jet card	Sentient Jet SJ25, light	$183,100 for 25 hours	None	$7,324 plus fuel and FET	Hours never expire; 10-hour guaranteed availability	sentient.com, Aug 2026
Jet card	NetJets Card275, Phenom 300	$215,000 for 25 hours	None	$8,600 including FET and fuel	90 blackout days; 48-hour callout; new sales limited since Jul 2026	Private Jet Card Comparisons, Jan 2025; SherpaReport, Aug 2026
Jet card	Flexjet 25, Phenom 300	$198,425 plus FET for 25 hours	None	$7,937 plus fuel and FET	5-day callout; monthly fuel adjustment	Private Jet Card Comparisons, Aug 13, 2026
Deposit	Wheels Up Signature	$200,000 deposit	$500 a month	$9,295 Phenom 300, $13,495 Challenger 300 (fixed plan) plus FET	20 peak days at 15 percent; Delta Diamond status	Deposit and monthly fee: Wheels Up, Sept 3, 2025. Hourly rates: Private Jet Card Comparisons, Sept 3, 2025, trade-reported and not published by Wheels Up
Deposit	XO Membership	$100,000 refundable deposit	$995 a year	Dynamic	XO Reserve at $250,000	flyxo.com, 2026
Fractional	NetJets share	Capital investment (unpublished)	“Approximately $360,000 per year for 50 hours”	About $8,901 all-in, modeled by Private Jet Card Comparisons on January 2025 data assuming a 50 percent share repurchase at exit, not a published rate	36-month minimum	netjets.com, 2026; Private Jet Card Comparisons, Jan 2025 data
Fractional	flyExclusive Citation XLS+	$695,000 for 1/16	Daily access fee, no monthly fee	Hourly, unpublished	1/16 share	Private Jet Card Comparisons, Mar 2026
Fractional	SkyShare SFX-12 (PC-12)	$220,000 for 1/16	20 days a year of access	$2,700 one-way, $1,500 round trip, plus fuel and FET	12 western states	Private Jet Card Comparisons, Oct 20, 2024, the most recent published figure
Empty-leg plan	SkyShare OpenJet	$15,000 a year ($30,000 for OpenJet+)	None	$0 per flight	Standby only; confirmed 24 hours out	skyshare.com, 2026
On demand, Part 135	Peak Aviation Solutions	$0	$0	$4,000 to $4,500 light, $4,500 to $5,000 mid, $5,000 to $6,500 super-mid, $6,500 to $13,000+ heavy, all-in	Two-hour daily minimum at most operators; pay per trip	Peak quote history, 2025 to 2026

Those category ranges are quoting averages across everything we source in each cabin class. A specific type can quote wider than its category average or sit a little outside it, and the per-aircraft guides on this site each publish their own type’s band.

Market-wide, Private Jet Card Comparisons put the Q1 2026 average card rate at $8,563 per hour for light jets, $9,639 midsize, $12,444 super-midsize, and $15,612 large cabin (Private Jet Card Comparisons, Apr 6, 2026).

The five programs people ask about most have their own deep dive, and on-demand drivers are on our private jet charter cost page: how much a jet card costs, NetJets cost per hour, how much Flexjet costs, Wheels Up cost, and fractional jet ownership cost. If you are still choosing between the models rather than pricing one of them, start with charter vs jet card vs fractional.

Monthly, yearly, or per trip: how private jet membership options bill

Three billing shapes cover almost everything in that table. A monthly private jet membership charges a fee every month on top of what you fly: Wheels Up Signature is $500 a month against its deposit, and every fractional share above carries a monthly management fee whether you fly that month or not. A private jet yearly membership charges once instead: XO is $995 a year against a refundable deposit, SkyShare’s OpenJet is $15,000 a year, and NetJets prices its share at approximately $360,000 a year for 50 hours before the hourly fee. flyExclusive charges a daily access fee rather than either one.

Per trip is the third shape. A private jet card membership carries no recurring fee at all: you prepay 25 hours and draw them down. On demand carries neither the prepayment nor the recurring fee.

Ask about private jet club membership cost and the answer usually arrives as one number, the deposit. The dues are the second one. Convert a private jet monthly membership to a yearly figure before you hold it against a yearly one, because a year is the only period you can put next to your own flying.

The All-In Hour: the only number that compares programs

Every program sells an hourly rate. None of them sells you an hour. You buy a year of access, and the real price is what that year cost divided by the hours you flew.

The All-In Hour is Peak Aviation Solutions’ formula for comparing any private aviation program: total annual cost, including deposit or share float, dues, hourly fees, taxi time, daily minimums, peak surcharges, fuel adjustments, and federal excise tax, divided by the flight hours you actually flew.

Here it is on 25 hours a year on a light jet, assumptions stated so you can swap in yours. Float is what the prepaid money would earn elsewhere, at 4 percent.

Option	Cash out in year one	Fees and float	Taxes and fuel	All-In Hour at 25 hours
NetJets Card275	$215,000	Float on $215,000: $8,600	Included in rate	About $8,944
Wheels Up Signature, fixed plan	$232,375 in flying against a $200,000 deposit	$6,000 monthly fees plus $8,000 float	7.5 percent FET, $17,428	About $10,552
Sentient SJ25	$183,100	Float: $7,324	7.5 percent FET, $13,733; fuel surcharge not published	About $8,166 before fuel
On demand, Peak, light jet, well-positioned	$100,000 to $112,500	None	7.5 percent FET, $7,500 to $8,438	About $4,300 to $4,838, quoted rate plus tax only

One label on that bottom row: it is the quoted rate carried through 25 hours rather than a measured All-In Hour, with none of the positioning load inside it, and our measured figure on three clients’ complete light-jet booking histories, which does carry positioning and daily minimums, is the $7,210 an hour in the table further down.

Two caveats. The on-demand line assumes the airplane is positioned reasonably near you and your legs clear the two-hour daily minimum. A one-way that needs a long reposition prices closer to the card, because you’re paying for the empty flight the card programs bury in their blended rate. And the card’s hour includes a guarantee worth real money on a peak Friday with 30 hours’ notice.

What the table shows honestly is where the gap comes from. Most of it is the hourly rate itself. The float is the part nobody prices for you: about $344 an hour on a $215,000 card, money you never see billed and never get back.

How many hours a year justify a membership?

Utilization decides this, and almost nothing else does: how many times a year you fly, how many hours those trips run, and whether they land in peak season.

Here is the ladder I actually use:

• Under 50 hours a year: don’t look at fractional at all. You will spend far too much money for the flying you do.
• 50 to 100 hours: a card can work if your trips cluster on peak days or inside short callouts. Otherwise on-demand keeps your capital and your options. Worth knowing that the supply is finite in both directions: on a peak Friday the market runs out of airplanes, which is exactly when a card’s guarantee earns its price. That is the backdrop to NetJets limiting new 25-hour card sales in late July 2026, though the company put the decision down to record-high retention alongside increased owner and market demand rather than to scarcity.
• 100 to 250 hours: fractional ownership starts to make real financial sense.
• 250 hours and up: whole aircraft ownership is the honest answer, and I have told clients exactly that.

The people I have pointed toward owning an airplane share a profile. They fly more than 250 hours a year, still mix commercial with private, and plan last minute, so availability is thin and pricing runs higher than the same trip would carry with lead time. At that point, paying for charter over and over stops being the cheaper path.

Our 2026 trips have averaged three and a half hours of flight time, which puts 90 annual hours at roughly 25 trips. Plenty of people carrying a share, a whole airplane, or a card are not flying 25 trips in a year. If that describes you, the program is a convenience purchase rather than a financial one, and it deserves to be called that before you sign.

About those sign-up incentives

As of August 2026, the big programs are running heavy first-time incentives: five hours free, $25,000 in flight credits, a guaranteed aircraft type written into the contract. As a small company, it is hard to compete with that, and I do not blame anyone for taking one.

Hold two things alongside it. The incentive is a first-contract event: once you have flown those hours, the second contract prices at the real rate, and that is the number your next five years actually cost. An offer that large also tells you what your signature is worth to them.

Even against the incentives, my read is that pay-as-you-go still comes in lower for most flyers under 100 hours. Run the All-In Hour on the second contract, not the first.

Program or charter broker: why people switch in both directions

Clients have left programs for Peak, and the reason is almost never price. It is what a private jet charter broker is when the founder is a pilot and based on the field: one point of contact who quotes, books, and flight-follows the trip.

You are not calling an air charter broker’s call center and reading out an account number to someone who has never met you. At a certain scale everybody becomes a transaction rather than a person, and that is what the people who move over tell me they were missing.

It goes the other way too. I have lost a couple of clients to programs, and both times the reason was transparent pricing. They want to know exactly what they are getting instead of paying current market rates, and I understand it completely. It is the one structural advantage a card holds over a jet charter broker.

What that trade rarely accounts for is the total, so we went and measured it.

What three clients paid against industry-average card rates

One note on how to read the two sets of numbers on this page. The hourly ranges in the table above are what an airplane bills per flight hour. The figures below are what several years of real trips cost divided by the hours those clients spent in the air, so repositioning, daily minimums, one-way legs, and federal excise tax all sit inside them. That is the fair number to hold against a card, because a card’s blended rate buries the same costs somewhere else.

We took three clients’ complete booking histories and repriced the exact same flying at the industry-average card rate for each aircraft category flown. Our figures are what the client paid, federal excise tax included. The card figures are Private Jet Card Comparisons’ Q1 2026 all-in averages. Trip counts are shown so you can judge the sample yourself.

Cabin class	Trips	Hours	Peak, three clients, actual paid	Industry average card rate	Difference
Light	14	50.0	$7,210 per hour	$8,563 per hour	16 percent lower
Midsize	11	41.3	$7,760 per hour	$9,639 per hour	19 percent lower
Super-midsize	23	87.0	$9,783 per hour	$12,444 per hour	21 percent lower

These three clients’ large-cabin flying is two trips and eight hours, which is not enough to average, so it is not in the table. Across our whole book large cabin is 11 trips, still a small sample. One of those two priced above the market rate.

The client with the widest gap is a Bozeman-based founder who also moves his team: 15 trips, 30 legs, 69.1 flight hours between October 2023 and December 2024. He paid us $530,467. The same flying at the industry-average card rate for each category comes to $716,462. That is $185,995, or 26 percent off the card number, on one client’s real calendar.

Three honest caveats. This prices the flying, not the guarantee: a card holder is buying certainty a broker cannot contractually match. It assumes the program would have had that aircraft on those dates. And it prices older trips at today’s card rates, so on the 2023 and 2024 flying the real gap is narrower than the table shows.

“We don’t want to be known as a broker. We want to be known as a consultant, the advocate for the private aviation user.”

Pat Sinnott, Founder, Peak Aviation Solutions

What are the hidden costs: peak days, daily minimums, taxi time, fuel surcharges, and FET?

The hourly rate is the smallest number in most contracts. The items that grow it, per Private Jet Card Comparisons’ review of card contracts (Jul 6, 2025) and its Q1 2026 market report: taxi time billed at 12 minutes per segment, daily minimums averaging 96 minutes, peak-day surcharges reaching 50 percent at some programs, fuel surcharges indexed weekly or monthly, 7.5 percent federal excise tax, interchange fees of 5 to 20 percent when you fly up a class, and deicing at $1,000 to $10,000 or more in winter.

The fee stack is the single most common thing that surprises a client handing me a contract to read: far more peak days than most buyers expect, fuel surcharges, and lead times inside which the program simply cannot accommodate you. The full stack, and a method for pricing your own typical leg under it, is in the jet card cost guide. The rules those charges hang off, the callout, the blackout calendar, the cancellation clause and the rest, are taken apart on the jet card contract page.

Is a membership cheaper than chartering on demand?

Sometimes, and the case for the membership is real. You get a fixed rate you know before you pick up the phone, and guaranteed lift inside a callout window.

Here is the other side, with our own numbers. Across 244 booked trips between October 2023 and September 2026, the average trip came to $33,464 across every cabin class and route, about 80 percent of it national flying.

Nothing is prepaid, nothing is owed monthly, nothing expires. You pay for the trip you approve, and the exact aircraft is named before you sign.

What is the cheapest way to fly privately?

For most people flying under 50 hours a year, on-demand charter costs least, because nothing is prepaid and nothing expires. Cheaper still, when your dates can bend, are empty legs: repositioning flights operators sell at 30 to 60 percent off the standard charter price rather than fly them empty. We check the empty-leg board first on every request; a program owner of ours flew Missoula to the Bay Area at the end of June 2026 on a next-day empty leg for $8,500 against about $18,000 at standard charter rates. That market is explained on our empty leg flights hub.

There is a different structure again. By-the-seat carriers like JSX sell you one seat on a scheduled semi-private flight instead of the whole airplane, on the routes they fly.

Empty-leg memberships vs free alerts

The unlimited private jet membership I can actually price from published terms is SkyShare’s OpenJet. It sells unlimited standby empty legs on SkyShare’s fleet for $15,000 a year, or $30,000 with the Gulfstream G450 added, confirmed only 24 hours ahead and never guaranteed, per skyshare.com. Blade’s Airport Pass sells a variation of the idea.

Our version is free. Peak’s empty leg alerts go out to more than 500 subscribers whenever legs actually post, rather than on a fixed schedule. They watch a 250 nautical mile radius around both ends of any US route and draw from hundreds of operators nationwide, not one fleet.

What happened to members when programs closed?

A prepaid membership is an unsecured loan to the program. JetSuite’s April 2020 shutdown put an estimated $50 million in SuiteKey deposits at stake (Private Jet Card Comparisons, Apr 20, 2020). Jet It grounded its fractional fleet in May 2023 and filed Chapter 7 in December 2025 with $36.2 million in liabilities (Private Jet Card Comparisons, Dec 30, 2025).

The lesson isn’t “don’t buy a membership.” It’s read the refund, escrow, and expiration terms before the rate, and weigh the balance sheet behind it.

Frequently asked questions about private jet membership

How much do private jet memberships cost?

Private jet memberships in 2026 range from about $15,000 a year for a standby empty-leg plan like SkyShare OpenJet, to $100,000 to $200,000 deposits plus dues at XO and Wheels Up, to $183,100 to $215,000 for a 25-hour jet card at Sentient Jet or NetJets, to fractional shares from $220,000 to $695,000 plus monthly management and hourly fees, based on published prices and trade reporting.

How much does a 25-hour NetJets card cost?

A 25-hour NetJets Card275 on the Phenom 300 costs $215,000, or $8,600 per hour including 7.5 percent federal excise tax, fuel, deicing, and catering, according to Private Jet Card Comparisons’ report on the January 2025 lineup and NetJets’ own cost page. It carries 90 blackout days and a 48-hour callout. NetJets limited new 25-hour card sales in late July 2026; existing cardholders can renew.

Which are the best private jet membership programs?

No single private jet membership is best for everyone, because utilization decides it. Under 50 hours a year, on-demand charter almost always costs less than any program. Between 50 and 100 hours, a jet card suits flyers who book on peak days or inside short callouts. At 100 to 250 hours, fractional ownership starts to make financial sense. Above 250 hours, whole aircraft ownership usually wins.

What is the cheapest private jet membership?

The cheapest private jet membership with published pricing is SkyShare’s OpenJet at $15,000 a year for unlimited standby empty-leg flights, confirmed 24 hours in advance and not guaranteed. Blade’s Airport Pass costs $695 a year, per blade.com. Peak Aviation Solutions runs a free empty-leg alert service that covers any US route with no annual fee, and you still pay for the leg you book.

Is a private jet membership worth it?

A private jet membership is generally worth it for flyers who log 50 or more hours a year, fly often on peak days or inside 48 hours, and value a fixed hourly rate and guaranteed availability over choosing the specific aircraft. It is generally not worth it below 50 hours a year, where prepaid capital, dues, daily minimums, and expiring hours push the all-in cost per hour above on-demand charter.

Does Costco still sell a private jet membership?

No. The Costco private jet membership was a Wheels Up Core membership sold from November 2020 at $17,499 for the first year with a $3,500 Costco Shop Card and $4,000 in flight credit, according to AvWeb. The partnership ended after 2022, and Wheels Up stopped selling its Legacy membership in March 2026. Its current product is the Signature Membership at a $200,000 minimum deposit.

Buy the flying, not the forecast

A private jet membership is a bet on your future calendar: that you will fly the hours, on the days, in the category, that the contract prices well. Some people know their calendar that precisely, and for them a card or a share is the right buy. Most people don’t, and for them the cheapest hour is the one they didn’t prepay for. Count your flights first, run the All-In Hour second, and read the second-contract price before the incentive.

Want the on-demand column filled in with your actual trips?

Send me your last few itineraries and I’ll price them the way we price everything at Peak. Two to five hand-picked options in about four to five hours, drawn from a network of about 5,000 aircraft. Those few come out of the one to three dozen operator quotes I pull on a single trip.

Each one names the tail number, year, refurbishment, WiFi, and the operator’s ARGUS or Wyvern rating, with fuel and crew inside the hourly figure.

Two checks sit behind that. Once per operator I open an Operator Vetting File: safety rating verified, an Additional Insured Certificate of Insurance, a W9, and a copy of the D085, the FAA operations specification listing the aircraft authorized under that operator’s Part 135 certificate, so I can confirm the exact tail is on it. Then within 24 hours of every flight I run the Total Flight Review, which is Peak’s own internal check on the trip itself, covering crew, weather, restrictions, catering and ground, and the whole list is on our safety page.

Here is what that looks like on the clock. You send me a trip at four in the afternoon. Before you go to bed you have a short list with tail numbers on it, and you pick one. Nothing is prepaid, nothing is signed, and no money moves until you approve a specific airplane.

I’ll run the same comparison against your current program, and if the program still wins at your hours, I’ll tell you which one and why.

I want the people I fly to feel like part of a family rather than an account number, and staying small is the only way I know to keep that promise.

Request a quote and put your real trips in the All-In Hour before you buy any private jet membership.