What to Ask Before You Buy a Jet Card

Every year, right about now, the desk starts fielding the same call. Someone flew four or five trips over the summer, the fall calendar looks busier than last year, and a program sales rep has sent over a glossy PDF. The question is always some version of the same one: should I buy a jet card before the winter season fills up? We are not going to answer that for you in an article, because the answer depends on your year. What we can do is hand you the questions we would ask on your behalf, in the order we would ask them, before anyone wires a deposit anywhere.

A jet card is a prepayment product. You put money with a program, and in exchange the program commits to a rate and to some level of availability. That is the whole idea, and it is a perfectly good idea when the numbers work. The trouble is that almost every meaningful term in a card agreement lives in the fine print rather than the brochure, and the terms vary enormously between programs that describe themselves in identical language. Here is what to actually read.

Where does the deposit sit, and how do I get it back

This is question one, and it is not close. When you fund a card, you are handing a company money for flights that have not happened yet. Ask, in writing, three things: whether the funds are held in a segregated or escrow account or simply on the program's balance sheet, what the process and timeline are for refunding an unused balance, and whether any penalty, fee or forfeiture applies to that refund.

The honest answers vary. Some programs hold deposits as an ordinary corporate liability, which is legal and common and also means your balance is exposed to the program's own health. Some refund on request within a stated number of business days. Some refund only at anniversary, minus a fee, and a few do not refund at all once the funds are drawn down past a threshold. Ours is a refundable flight credit balance with a stated processing window, and the terms are published on the memberships page rather than mailed to you after you sign. Whatever program you are looking at, get the refund mechanics on the same page as the rate card, because they are equally part of the price.

What exactly is the locked rate locked against

"Locked hourly rate" is doing a lot of work in most brochures. Ask what it is locked against and for how long.

Locked by category, or by specific tail? A rate quoted for "midsize" is only useful if the program will actually source you a midsize aircraft rather than telling you nothing in that category is available and offering an upgrade at market. Locked for how long, and measured from when? Rate windows commonly run from card activation, not from your first flight, which quietly shortens the window if you buy in September and do not fly until January. And locked against what escalators? Fuel surcharge clauses are the classic escape hatch: a rate can be locked in the headline and still move with a fuel index buried in section nine.

Then there is the question of what the rate includes. Repositioning, overnight and crew fees, de-icing in the months when you will actually need it, FBO ramp charges, catering, ground transport. The 7.5% federal excise tax applies to domestic charter regardless of program, and no card makes it disappear, so a program that quotes rates "plus FET" is being accurate rather than sneaky. A program that quotes an hourly rate and then adds six line items you were not shown is a different matter. Compare like against like by pricing the same trip on the open market first, which is what the cost calculator is for.

What is the availability guarantee actually worth

The reason to buy a card, more than price, is the call-out guarantee: the promise that with a defined amount of notice, an aircraft will be there. That promise is only as good as its remedy.

Ask what happens when the program cannot deliver inside your window. Does it substitute a comparable or larger aircraft at its own cost? Does it book you commercially? Does it credit you hours? Does it simply apologize and quote you the spot market? A guarantee with no stated consequence is a preference, not a guarantee, and you will discover which one you bought on the worst possible morning.

Ask about peak days separately, and get the list. Most programs designate a set of dates each year (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the days around New Year, the Sunday after a major sporting event) where the ordinary rules do not apply: longer call-out windows, surcharges, or both. Some programs, ours included, do not surcharge peak days. Nobody can conjure airframes that are already committed, though, which is why the honest version of this answer is always about lead time. If your winter travel includes holiday dates, the fix is booking them early, not buying a card in the belief that it substitutes for planning.

How do the hours get counted

Charter bills on block time, meaning engine start at the departure ramp to engine shutdown at arrival, taxi and sequencing included. That is standard and it is what the aircraft and crew actually spend, but the details of how a card draws down against it are not standard at all.

Ask about the minimum daily charge, the taxi time allowance, and the rounding increment. A program that rounds every leg up to the next half hour is charging you meaningfully more than one that bills to the minute, on exactly the same rate card. Ask what happens to positioning legs, whether short hops carry a minimum, and how overnights are treated. If block time is new to you, we have explained it here, and it is worth the two minutes before you compare two rate cards that look identical and are not.

While you are in the paperwork, confirm who is actually flying you. A card program is a purchasing arrangement, not an air carrier. The flights are operated by FAA Part 135 certificated operators, and the program's job is to choose them well, which is a thing you can ask about directly. Our answer to that question is the vetting protocol, and any program worth your deposit should have an equally specific one rather than a paragraph about "the highest safety standards."

Buy the card after the flights, not before

The last question is the one nobody in a sales conversation will ask you, so we will. How many hours did you actually fly in the last twelve months, and on how many distinct routes?

Cards earn their keep at a certain volume and a certain amount of predictability. Below that, the certainty you are buying is certainty you will not use, and the deposit is simply your money sitting in someone else's account. Above it, the math usually works and works clearly. We wrote out where that line tends to fall in jet card versus on demand charter, and the short version of what a jet card is covers the rest.

The sequence we recommend is dull and it works: fly two or three trips on demand this fall, keep the invoices, and let your own flying pattern make the argument. If the card is right for you in September it will still be right for you in November, with the added benefit that you will know what you are buying. Any program that treats that as hesitation to be overcome has told you something useful about the program.