NetJets Cost: What Fractional Jet Ownership Really Adds Up To

Ask NetJets what it costs to fly with them and you get a question back: how do you want to buy in, and how many hours will you fly? There is no price list on the website and no “from $X” banner. For the largest private-jet operator in the world, that is a lot of mystery.

Here is what the mystery hides. A light-jet share is estimated at $500,000 or more up front. A monthly management fee of $12,000 to $15,000 comes on top. And a single hour in a Phenom 300 on the NetJets Card costs $8,600.

You pay to get in (a fractional share, a lease or a prepaid card), you pay an hourly rate every time you fly, and then come the taxes and surcharges that almost nobody mentions upfront. Here is what each layer costs.

What you need to know

• There is no single NetJets price. You choose one of three ways to buy access, and each is priced differently.
• A fractional share is an asset you buy. You pay for the share, pay a monthly fee to run it, pay by the hour to fly it, and sell it back at the end of the term.
• The card asks the least of you. Twenty-five prepaid hours at a 2025 light-jet rate of $8,600 an hour, with no aircraft to own or resell.
• Tax depends on the program. Fractional flights pay a federal fuel surtax, while card flights pay the 7.5% federal excise tax.
• Berkshire Hathaway owns NetJets. Its fleet of around 850 aircraft in mid-2026 is the industry’s biggest, and card sales have still been waitlisted at times.

The three ways to buy NetJets

NetJets sells access three ways, and every price below belongs to one of them.

Fractional share. You buy a slice of one aircraft type, usually a 1/16 share, and own it for a fixed term. This is the fractional ownership NetJets built its name on, and it is the most expensive way in.

Lease. You get the same flying on the same fleet without buying anything. You skip the down payment and the resale, and pay a higher ongoing rate for a shorter commitment instead. NetJets pitches both the share and the lease at people flying 50 or more hours a year.

The NetJets Card. You prepay flight hours in blocks, starting at 25. You own no aircraft, so there is nothing to sell back and no monthly management fee to pay. It is the closest NetJets comes to an off-the-shelf product, and the only program whose rate we can quote to the dollar.

NetJets fractional ownership cost

This is the number most people mean when they ask what NetJets costs, and NetJets quotes it only in private. The figures below come from aviation brokers who resell and analyze these programs, so they are well-informed estimates.

A 1/16 share, the smallest NetJets sells, buys roughly 50 occupied flight hours a year. The up-front share price scales with cabin size:

That share purchase is only the entry fee. On top of it you pay two recurring costs:

• A monthly management fee for crew, maintenance, insurance and scheduling. Broker estimates put a light jet near $12,000 to $15,000 a month, climbing toward $35,000 for a large-cabin aircraft.
• An occupied hourly rate, billed only for the hours you fly. Estimates run around $8,500 an hour for a light jet and $16,000 or more for a large cabin.

Private Jet Card Comparisons blended all of it into one figure for a Phenom 300 share: roughly $8,901 per hour as of January 2025. That number includes the amortized share price (assuming a 50% buy-back), the management fee, the hourly rate and fuel.

At the end of the term, typically five years, NetJets guarantees to buy your share back at fair market value, less a remarketing fee of around 7%. The jet will have depreciated by then, so plan to lose roughly 30% to 50% of what you paid for the share. Think of it as a depreciating asset you buy for convenience.

The NetJets Card: the one rate we can quote

NetJets rebuilt its card lineup in January 2025, and for once the rates were reported in detail. Private Jet Card Comparisons, the independent rate tracker, published them from NetJets’ own card sheet:

The Card275 rate was described as a price cut. It brought light-jet card pricing back to about where it was in 2021, before NetJets shut the program during the pandemic demand surge. Choosing between the two light-jet cards comes down to days: the Card320 costs $2,600 more an hour and lets you fly on far more days of the year.

Midsize and large-cabin cards cost a lot more. Brokers estimate a midsize Citation Latitude card at $250,000 to $310,000 for 25 hours, and a large-cabin card at over $450,000. NetJets confirmed only the light-jet figures, so these two are estimates.

Having the money doesn’t always get you a card. NetJets suspended card sales entirely in 2021 during the demand crunch, and at times new inquiries have gone on a waitlist instead of being sold a card straight away.

NetJets lease: the middle path

A lease gives you fractional-style flying on the same fleet, with the same guaranteed availability, without buying a share. You put no money down and carry no resale risk. It suits someone who wants to fly 50-plus hours a year without locking up the capital a share needs.

In the January 2025 rebrand, NetJets renamed its 25-hour lease Share355L, with 10 blackout dates and 80 peak days. Pricing is quote-only: a monthly fee plus an hourly rate “similar to ownership,” without the share purchase. NetJets doesn’t publish the minimum term, and sources put it anywhere from 24 to 60 months, so ask before you sign.

The costs nobody quotes you

The hourly rate is never the whole bill. Every NetJets program adds variable charges on top.

Tax, and why the program matters. A fractional owner and a card holder flying the same jet are taxed differently. Genuine fractional-ownership flights run under the FAA’s Part 91 Subpart K rules and pay a federal fuel surtax of 14.1 cents per gallon (section 4043 of the U.S. tax code) instead of the 7.5% air-transportation excise tax. Jet-card flying is closer to charter, so it pays the 7.5% federal excise tax plus a per-passenger segment fee. NetJets builds the 7.5% into its quoted card rates. That is why the Card275’s $8,600 is “tax included.”

Fuel surcharges. This charge moves with the jet-fuel index and is adjusted periodically. On most programs it is billed separately from the base hourly rate.

Peak-day surcharges. Cards carry between 45 and 90 peak or blackout days a year. Fly on a designated peak date and expect a surcharge of up to around 50%, plus a longer notice period.

Ferry and positioning. If the aircraft has to fly empty to reach you, or to reposition after dropping you off, you can be charged for that flight on one-way trips.

De-icing, international and handling. Winter de-icing is pay-as-used. International trips add overflight, customs and handling fees that domestic flying does not.

Is NetJets worth it?

NetJets makes sense once you fly enough that booking charter trip by trip becomes a scheduling headache, and when guaranteed availability with one operator matters more to you than the lowest hourly rate.

Brokers use a rough rule. Below about 25 hours a year, ad-hoc charter or a card is usually the sensible choice. Between 25 and 50 hours, look at a card or a lease. Above 50 hours a year, and especially above 100, a fractional share starts to pay for its capital lock-up in convenience and rate. These are rules of thumb, and they leave out what NetJets is really selling: you call, and one of around 850 jets is there for you.

NetJets is neither a bargain nor an investment, and you will lose money on the share. What you pay for is time, certainty and a standard of service. If those are worth six figures a year to you, the math works. If you fly a handful of times a year, it does not.

How NetJets compares

NetJets has plenty of competition. If you are weighing fractional ownership against a membership or subscription, our private jet membership comparison puts NetJets head to head with Flexjet, Wheels Up and VistaJet, with each program’s entry cost and hourly rate side by side. Our guide to the best private jet companies covers the wider field, on-demand charter and jet cards included. And the most expensive private jets in the world are another kind of spending entirely: flying mansions owned outright by billionaires and royalty.

Still deciding whether private is worth it at all? For long-haul comfort at a fraction of the price, the best business-class airlines close more of the gap than you might expect.