Can I choose a specific airplane type when I buy a jet card?

Written by Doug Gollan

Posted on May 20, 2018June 11, 2018

When you charter on-demand, buy a full aircraft or fractional share, you buy a specific aircraft type. What about jet card membership programs?

In case you haven’t noticed, most jet card programs specify cabin size, then fulfill your needs from a variety of aircraft types in that cabin category. In some cases that’s because you are buying your jet card from a management company and they are clustering all of the aircraft in that cabin size category together. In other cases, it’s a broker program that is sourcing aircraft from charter operators, including management companies and fleet operators. You’ll often see a range of seating for the aircraft that apply to that category, so in the SuperMid category you could get a jet that fits eight people one time and 10 the next. In Large Cabin jets it’s not unusual to see a range of 10 to 14 seats.

Most of the time this works fine. However, sometimes it doesn’t. For example, if you are traveling with a group of 12 people a Large Cabin jet seating 10 people is no good. In some cases, the answer is simply in that programs allow you to upgrade or downgrade, although sometimes there can be interchange fees, and sometimes it’s not allowed, particularly on peak days. On the other hand, some people just want a specific aircraft type, not a category. The Citation X, for example, is popular because it’s fast – able to fly over 700 miles per hour.

Can you buy an aircraft-specific jet card?

The answer is yes, and there are jet cards from all sorts of providers, brokers, fleet operators, management companies and fractional jet fleet operators who sell fractional jet cards. If you do go the specific aircraft route, keep in mind you may be paying a premium to select a specific aircraft type instead of just a category, and very importantly, if it is through a jet card broker, find out what safety criteria they use to source the charter operators who they are using. Private Jet Card Comparisons provides sourcing requirements and minimum pilot experience requirements for the over 250 programs we cover.

The tradeoff with some aircraft specific programs is you give up guaranteed availability. And remember, configurations can vary, so unless you are buying a fractional jet card make sure to find out if there is any variation in seating capacity, even if you are buying into a specific aircraft cabin. Again, that’s something we cover in our comparison spreadsheets. And don’t forget to read the fine print, since programs are often allowed to substitute a like or upgraded aircraft. If you need to have a specific aircraft type, you can do on-demand charter, however, the jet charter price is going to be based on market rates and you will have to scrutinize each of the aircraft and operators, your own due diligence, which is time-consuming.

Below we analyzed the Private Jet Card Comparisons database to find jet card programs that provide one-way fixed rates for specific aircraft: