OneFlight emailed jet card members a ‘Fly Forward’ offer via The Jet Merchants, a charter broker and advisory service founded by Luis Garcia.
The latest jet card recovery offer for impacted OneFlight International customers is from The Jet Merchants.
OneFlight paused flights earlier this month, leaving as much as $300 million in prepaid jet card flights at risk.
However, the offer notice came directly from the now-paused jet card broker.
So far, other offers have come from the companies making them.
Jet Merchants Founder and CEO Luis Garcia confirmed the offer to Private Jet Card Comparisons.
He described it as a “marketing agreement” with Colorado-based OneFlight.
Per the email received by multiple OneFlight jet card holders, “The Jet Merchants is an independent private aviation advisory firm and is not affiliated with OneFlight International. OneFlight does not sponsor, endorse, or guarantee The Jet Merchants or its services.”
Garcia says he had reached out to OneFlight last week “seeking to see if there was a way we could assist clients, particularly those with upcoming flights.”
Garcia said, “We had already come up with the architecture of the program before reaching out.”
So who is The Jet Merchants?
The Houston-based firm was founded in 2024 by longtime private aviation sales executive Luis Garcia.
It is a sister company to Game Day Private Jets, which Garcia also founded.
Game Day focuses on crowdsourcing and shared private jet flights to sporting events and has already signed agreements with several major university alumni associations.
In June, it launched an NIL jet card.
The Jet Merchants was set up as an advisory service for private flyers.
The companies currently have seven full-time employees, according to Garcia.
The Jet Merchants offers several different programs.
Its Private Client charter and advisory service entails a $15,000 annual engagement with a 5% trip service fee.
It also offers a refundable deposit program starting at $125,000.
You pay a 15% fixed management fee, or $18,750, and then book flights at wholesale prices with no markup.
Flights are sourced using dynamic pricing.
Garcia says the program is designed to attract flyers with fixed-rate jet cards who want to arbitrage those flights, using their jet cards when the guaranteed pricing beats the market.
However, he says, “We are not about the lowest price. Our clients want value.”
One selling point is financial security.
Funds are maintained in segregated accounts that are FDIC-insured in your name. It is a white-label setup through Goodwin, a B2B company that connects operators and charter brokers.
According to Garcia, when a client wants to book a flight, they can pay via ACH, wire, or credit card (with an additional fee), or transfer funds from the account.
Garcia says only the client can move funds from the account.
Garcia spent nine years at charter operator Starbase Jet, ending as SVP.
He joined Wheels Up in 2015 in a similar capacity, before leaving in 2024 as EVP/Head of Sales for Volato.
He founded his two current companies after leaving Volato when it exited its jet card and fractional program.
Managing Partner Jake Menker also worked at Wheels Up.
Garcia says The Jet Merchants is designed to bridge the gap between traditional ad hoc charter brokers and guaranteed jet card and fractional solutions.
The program emailed tonight to OneFlight members lets them recoup some potential losses if the jet card seller doesn’t restart.
It offers two options.
One includes flying on an ad hoc basis without putting up any funds.
The second includes funding an account with at least $100,000.
The key is that The Jet Merchants intends to provide a fixed hourly rate schedule across the various categories of aircraft – light, midsize, super-midsize, and large cabin.
Garcia says he is still working out whether there will be turboprop rates.
For each trip, The Jet Merchants will source flights using dynamic pricing.
Garcia says the category rates will come from an average of more than 125 individual aircraft rates OneFlight offered across the various categories.
If the OneFlight midsize rate average was $11,000 per hour, a four-hour trip would price at $44,000.
Garcia says if the option the customer chooses costs $30,000, there would be two pricing options.
The Jet Merchants would split the spread – $14,000 – with the client so that they would pay $37,000.
The $7,000 would be a deducted value from their unused cash balance with OneFlight.
This would continue until their OneFlight balance had been run down.
“The thinking,” Garcia says, “Is that these would have been prices similar to what they would have been paying OneFlight, so the savings with our program are truly realized value.”
If you fund at least $100,000 through the Fly Forward program, The Jet Merchants’ fee becomes 10% of the operator’s price.
In that case, your flight would cost $33,000, and $11,000 would be deducted from your OneFlight cash balance value.
Garcia says a benefit is that the discount is “taken off your invoice. There are no credits, no bonus hours, no expiration dates.”
The agreement between Jet Merchants and OneFlight allows, with client approval, data about your balances to be transferred over.
At that point, they would choose whether to join the Jet Merchants program.
OneFlight members must enroll with Jet Merchants by Oct. 31, 2026.
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