Guides
Straight answers, written once
Each of these answers a question we are asked often enough to be worth writing down properly. None of them is a sales page, and where the honest answer is that a private jet is the wrong choice, they say so.
Why these four, and not forty
Each of these answers a question no other page on this site answers. Cost has a page of its own, flying with animals has a service page, and safety ratings are explained where operators are discussed. Writing guides on those topics as well would put two of our own pages in front of one question, which helps neither of them and helps you less.
What is left is genuinely uncovered: the comparison people actually make before chartering for the first time, how late a booking can realistically be made, what luggage fits in practice rather than on a spec sheet, and what the terminal experience is like for someone who has never used one.
The build refuses a guide whose address collides with a service page, which is the kind of discipline that is easier to enforce mechanically than to remember.
How they are written
Answer first. Each guide opens with the question as it is actually typed and answers it in sixty or seventy words, before any argument. If that paragraph is all you read, it should have been worth opening the page — and if an assistant quotes one span from here, that is the span it should take.
Numbers come from the same model that prices the routes, so a figure quoted in a guide and a figure in a price table cannot disagree. The build checks distances stated in prose against the computed ones and fails if they drift.
None of these is a sales page. Where the honest answer is that a private jet is the wrong choice — one passenger, a well-served route, a schedule the airlines already fly — the guide says so plainly. A customer who charters a flight they did not need does not come back, which makes candour the commercial position as well as the decent one.
They are dated and revised rather than published and forgotten. Charter changes: permit lead times move, curfews are introduced, an airport reconfigures its business-aviation apron. Each guide carries the date it was last edited, and that date reflects an actual edit rather than a deployment.
If a guide contradicts what a broker tells you about your specific trip, believe the broker. These are written to be true in general, and general truths have exceptions that a named operator on a named date resolves.
Questions these guides come back to
- How much does it cost to charter a private jet?
- There is no fixed price. As indicative starting points, light jets from about $3,200 per flight hour, super-midsize jets from about $6,000 per flight hour, heavy jets from about $8,000 per flight hour and ultra-long-range aircraft from about $11,500 per flight hour, plus positioning and ground handling at both ends. Each route page shows an indicative starting price for that trip. Those figures are starting prices, not quotes: the price of your flight is calculated individually and depends on aircraft availability, where the aircraft is positioned, the date, the operating company and airport charges.
- How far in advance do I need to book?
- Four to six hours is usually enough for a domestic or intra-European leg if an aircraft is already positioned nearby. Intercontinental flights need longer for crew duty time, overflight and landing permits. The genuine constraints are seasonal: Nice and Ibiza in July, Geneva in ski season, and Riyadh at any time because of permit lead times.
- How early do I need to arrive at the airport?
- Fifteen minutes before departure at a private terminal, and often less. There is no check-in desk and no security queue. On international departures passport control happens at the FBO, usually in under five minutes. At many airports your car can drive to the aircraft steps.
- How much luggage can I take?
- Baggage is limited by volume, not by piece count — around 50 cubic feet on a light jet and 115 on a heavy jet. Skis, golf bags and oversized cases are fine but must be declared when you request the quote, because they can change which aircraft works. Weight matters on long legs: a full cabin plus heavy baggage can shorten range enough to add a fuel stop.
- What is an empty leg flight?
- An empty leg is a repositioning flight an aircraft has to make anyway — flying empty to collect its next passengers, or home after a drop-off. Operators sell those seats at 25% to 75% below a normal charter. The trade-off is rigidity: the route, date and often the departure window are fixed by someone else’s trip, and the flight can be cancelled if the original charter changes.
All guides
Private jet or first class: the honest comparison
Where a private jet genuinely beats a first-class ticket, where it does not, and the passenger count at which the maths changes.
How far in advance to book a private jet
Realistic lead times by route type, which constraints actually bite, and why booking early does not save money in charter.
What actually fits: private jet baggage in practice
Why piece counts do not apply, what skis and golf bags really cost you in aircraft class, and when weight quietly becomes a range problem.
What happens at a private jet terminal
The FBO experience step by step for a first-time passenger — arrival, documents, boarding, and what is different on the way back.
How to verify a private jet operator before you pay
A step-by-step check of the operator certificate, the aircraft registration, audit claims and payment terms, with the public lookups that do it.