Wholesale Jet Club features memberships with a straight 3.5% markup from operator pricing

Wholesale Jet Club is a sister company of JetSet Group, both started by former Blue Star Jets executive Steven S. Orfali, however, they each have different business models, JetSet Group being a more typical broker program while Wholesale Jet Club provides both jet cards with guaranteed pricing and wholesale on-demand jet charter.

Orfali launched JetSet in 2012 after leaving Blue Star and Wholesale in October 2016. “They are separate entities. We run them separately. We don’t co-mingle leads,” he says.

For jet cards, the service area for Wholesale is the U.S., Canada and Caribbean. It has four offerings covering Light, Midsize, Super-Mid and Heavy jets. Wholesale only works with operators that are rated ARGUS Gold or higher. The pilot-in-charge is required to have at least 5,000 flight hours.

In terms of pricing, Wholesale’s Light Jet 25 hour program is $107,000, while Mid is $137,000, Super-Mid is $187,000 and Heavy for $248,000, excluding the 7.5% Federal Excise Tax.  All cards have guaranteed availability and are valid for 18 months or until funds are used. There is no escrow option, but customer funds are kept in “segregated” accounts and not pulled until the trip, Orfali says. There is a minimum of $50 million in liability and risk insurance.

Additional fees include a $12,000 initiation fee and annual dues of $10,000. At the same time, there is no CPI (Consumer Price Index) escalator. Also, there is no taxi time billed which saves 12 minutes per segment compared to most programs. The daily minimum is two hours and there are no roundtrip discounts.

One of the most attractive parts of the program is there are only seven peak days and peak day surcharge is only 5%, so it is a good program if you fly around the holidays. Most programs have 20 or more peak days and some surcharges range as high as 40%. Regular lead time for reservations is 10 hours, and peak day lead time is 48 hours, also comparatively good. Cancellation is 72 hours for non-peak days, so the program is better suited for those of you who don’t make last minute changes. The minimum age for unaccompanied minors is six years old.

There are also three non-jet card membership options, a full year for $999 per month, six months for $1,250 per month or $1,499 per month for six months. These memberships offer dynamic pricing with guaranteed availability. For these programs, Wholesale provides operator pricing with a 3.5% administrative fee tacked on whereas broker markup-up varies widely. Victor made news several years ago when it launched with a fixed 10% markup, and earlier this month Jettly announced a membership concept similar to Wholesale.

Orfali says Wholesale’s strong points include low prices and personalized service. You can compare Wholesale Jet Club’s programs against over 100 other jet card programs by becoming a registered subscriber at Private Jet Card Comparisons hereby becoming a registered subscriber at Private Jet Card Comparisons here.