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Private Jet Insider

Welcome to the third edition of Private Jet Insider. I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving with your family and friends. I also hope you didn't get stuck in airline BS. Or rather, I hope you did get stuck in it and realize now that private aviation is the way to go. Funny story on that...

I had a follower reach out to me on X for a mid-afternoon charter flight for Thanksgiving Day. His soon-to-be-wife had family in Texas and his family was in the midwest. I am not a charter broker, but I'm friends with some of the good ones, so I called my buddy Mike at Leviate and set him up with a flight. Got a screaming deal on a Citation XLS for $14,330 or a Citation CJ3 for $12,500, which on any week is a good deal but especially on Thanksgiving week. The flight was about 2 hours, and left at 1pm on Thanksgiving so that he could do Thanksgiving with both sides of the family. That's the beauty of private aviation.

Today, we're going to talk about Black Friday / end of the year purchasing for private aviation. But first, a little bit of housekeeping...

Black Friday Deals Are Back, Baby!

I don't think I can emphasize this enough: Covid rocked the private aviation industry and created a whole lot of market imbalances that still haven't recovered. Here, let me show you this chart from the FAA that shows private aviation today vs. pre-pandemic.

As you can see, after the Covid blip, it hasn't gone below 400,000 take-offs and landings (operations) where this was the max pre-pandemic. Everyone was concerned about health and many realized how great it was to fly private and stayed. From aircraft prices to charter prices and fractional prices, everything has been elevated from an increase in demand.

But, there's some relief this year. From about January of this year, the whole market has cooled, showing up first in the charter markets. We're not back to pre-pandemic levels, but compared to the peak demand it is softening. If you remember, charter is the least committal way to fly private, which makes it the most "elastic" in terms of demand. (I like to occasionally remind you of terms we learned in Economics 101 and 201 in undergrad.)

Now that the macro picture is set, you can now see why this year the Black Friday deals for jet cards being back is not shocking. Jet Card providers didn't need to discount, because they had all-you-can-eat demand (and turkey and dressing, haha Thanksgiving joke) the last few Black Fridays, why give away any margin in the form of a discount?

Sure, some gave "perceived" discounts, but this year I'm seeing some real life discounts.

A shoutout to Doug Gollan with Private Jet Card Comparisons who does a pretty good job of keeping up with discounts, and the source for many of my findings. These are not ranked by "best deals" these are just randomly sorted.

Oh yeah, its been a while since I've written a newsletter so I need to point this out: none of these are sponsored post and I am receiving no compensation for placing any of these people on this list.

I'm always honest with you all if there's anything in it for me (there are a lot of scummy people in this industry that don't do this). This is just an aggregated list for your benefit. If you want to hire me for consulting in choosing the right one, you can do so for $8,500 (which is my jet card consulting rate as of November 2024). This includes a trip analysis and profile, a 1, 3, and 5 year plan for private aviation, and planning calls with me. Reply to this email if you're interested.

Airshare Waives Fees for 90 Days

Airshare is the lone fractional provider to publicly offer any sort of discounting heading into the end of the year. They are waiving their fixed costs for the first 90 days of your contract, which can represent a savings of at least $30,000 and could be much higher if you have a higher-time fraction of their larger Challenger 3500 fleet.

This is nice, because you get to ease into the monthly bill of fractional ownership and at this point, wouldn't have to start paying until the end of February. A side note, I got to fly on an Airshare Phenom 300e a few weeks ago, it is a very sweet ride.

Fly Alliance 50 for 50 Black Friday Sale

Alright this will be a bit confusing if I don't explain how these jet cards work. When you buy a jet card, you're buying a guaranteed base rate, which you hope to be able to hit. If you leave at weird times, go to random places, fly on peak days, or fuel prices go up, the price may go up, but the base price is what you're shooting for (and what is advertised). Here's the pricing structure for the base-rate:

• Light Jet: $7,650/hr
• Midsize Jet: $8,895/hr
• XLS Gen 2: $9,950/hr
• Supermid: $9,985/hr
• Supermid (9+ Seats): $11,895/hr
• Citation Latitude: $12,395/hr
• Heavy Jet: $13,985/hr
• Ultra Long Range: $16,905/hr

With their 50 for 50, you can upgrade the aircraft size for 50% of your hours when you buy a 50 hour jet card. That means, you could buy 50 hours on their Midsize ($444,750) and get a free upgrade for 25 of those hours to the Supermid for free (a $27,250 value). The math is kind of hard to do in your head, but essentially you'll save $27,000-$73,000 ish on the whole package.

Bitlux Any Card Program: 3 Free Hours or Free NY to FL Trip

For all my crypto bros, here's where you can pay directly for a charter using crypto instead of converting it into fiat. Kyle, the owner and CEO of Bitlux, has become a friend over the past year or so and he's obsessed with client experience. Here's their offering:

Buy 30 hours or more on their Cardinal or Ascent card, get 3 free. Their base rates are reasonable, too and all include a catering credit ($500-$750) and the larger cards have a de-icing credit.

• Midsize Jets: $8,550/hr
• Super-Midsize: $10,498/hr
• Heavy Jets: $12,425/hr

So that means, up to a $37,275 savings on their Black Friday deal. Tell the team you heard it from Preston and to tell Kyle, he'll probably throw in some special swag or something for you too.

Outlier Jets: 10-Hour Entry Jet Card

Usually, jet cards have a minimum hour limit of 25 hours. That means, you have a minimum $200k commitment to get the service levels, convenience, and locked-in pricing. With Outlier's new 10-hour card, you can dip your toe for a much lower commitment level. It is fully refundable deposit, no peak days, no blackout dates, and all-inclusive hourly rate that doesn't expire. That is a very strong offer from Outlier, and so far the only ones that have all of those features.

Plus they are having a party for card holders in Naples on December 4th. I'm just saying, if you want to go to an epic networking event go to one where you know everyone else flies private. Guaranteed ROI for that party. (Come pick me up on your way if you go)

Here's the pricing:

• Light Jet: $7,700/hr
• Midsize: $9,650/hr
• Super-Mid: $11,750
• Heavy: $13,550

Sentient Jet 25th Anniversary Card

​Sentient Jet literally invented the jet card concept (In a few weeks I'm going to write a big piece on the history of the jet card). They're owned by the FlexJet conglomerate of companies, which means that they get some priority access to the fleet. Unlike Netjets, which predominantly flies on QS tails (all Netjets tails end in "QS" for "quarter share"), Sentient Jet sources supply in the marketplace whether from FlexJet or from other providers.

The limited Edition 25th anniversary jet card is reducing the base rate for light jets by $500 an hour ($12,500 minimum savings) and their super-midsize by $1000 ($25,000 minimum savings). Their non-reduced rates are:

• Light Jet: $6,975
• Midsize: $8,985
• Super-Mid: $10,980
• Large Cabin: $12,990

Amalfi Jets: Bruce Wayne Rolex w/ $500k deposit

Yes, Amalfi Jets as in "this is Kolin with Amalfi Jets" on TikTok. I get a lot of Dm's about this dude, and I don't know him personally. What I do know is I wouldn't buy any of his "phone calls" with clients. Anyways, his company has a promotion for Black Friday that you get a free Bruce Wayne Rolex with a $500,000 deposit.

Quick google search says that its an $18-20k value with a deposit. Their jet card program advertises "dynamic pricing" which means that they're going to go out to the market and find you a charter, and they'll earn 4% risk free on your $500,000 deposit and you don't have a guaranteed price. A meh deal, IMO. Buy the Rolex with the interest you get.

FlyExclusive 10% Off and Waived Member Fees

I end with one of the stronger, more straight forward offerings for you. FlyExclusive, who has been in the news a bit recently with the Volato "inherited" fleet, (read more here), is offering a 10% discount for deposits of $100,000 or more, and 12 months of waived fees to their "jet club" membership ($1,000 a month, gotta get some ARR for those analysts, baby!) at $250,000.

They don't publish prices, so I can't show you how much better (or worse) this deal is than the others. Here's a funny thing about this world though, and a bit of insider baseball. The chances of you flying on a Fly Exclusive tail number with one of the other programs is relatively high. The broker world is very fragmented, the operator world that charter brokers sell to is more centralized (although there are hundreds of charter operators with 1 or 2 airplanes they manage), so you may have a Sentient Jet Card trip on a Fly Exclusive airplane. Its a small world.

Aviation Subscription 50% off AviaCost

​AviaCost, which is the unofficial operating cost data sponsor of Private Jet Insider, is having a 50% off sale on Black Friday only. Save 50% on their annual subscription, which is great for calculating costs, time savings, and a whole lot more. I am also available to show you a demo of how I create content based on their data (most of what you see on X is supported by their data). Let them know I sent you so that Chris (the founder and a good friend) will still let me tag along to conferences with him!

A Word to the Wise

I got a DM recently about analyzing balance sheets of private jet card providers. The problem is, there's only 2 (Wheels Up and Flyexclusive) that are public, so not much analysis. But, I want you to understand how this works.

When a jet card is sold, the provider records cash as an asset and deferred liability on the liability side. The margin is then recognized as profit in the future based on the cost to fulfill the charter.

Here is the stupid simple outline of how the business model works.

They're guaranteeing a rate today, and in the future they will have to pay to fulfill that flight. They then recognize their gross margin, and after that is SG&A and that's about it for most of these jet card businesses. The kicker is, you pay cash now for future flights and they keep your cash. Enter: the ledger.

So cash gets recorded as an asset on the balance sheet. In the future when you fly your trip, they reduce cash and deferred liability evenly, and recognize the revenue and the expense in the month that flight travelled.

So what does this mean?

This means, as a customer putting larger sums ($200-$500k of deposits) with that jet card provider, you are lining up on the "liabilities" side aka the creditors side if something goes south. Some (eh, let's say most) use the cash on deposit to fund operations, growth, marketing, compensation, incentives, etc. This is all great when cash is coming in from new subscribers, and can be an efficient way to scale growth. When there's a systematic shift though, that is when there is trouble.

There plenty of companies that have gone belly up with client deposits. You will likely never see that money again, because you are probably behind a lot of secured creditors. This is why it is important to pick a jet card provider that has been around for a while and that has a reputation of running a good and efficient business. Durability is something to be said in a jet card business in private aviation.

Until next week,

Preston Holland

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P.s. I write this newsletter for free because I think its important to bring more transparency into the marketplace. If you would like to buy me a coffee, you can do so below and I'll call you while drinking my coffee and we can talk private jets.

Buy Me A Coffee ☕️

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