The private aviation glossary
104 terms explained in plain English — from ACMI to wet lease.
C
Catering charter
Catering on a private flight is ordered through the FBO or a specialist inflight caterer, and quality and price vary from a basic snack basket included in the charter to multi-course meals costing several hundred dollars per person. Most operators include soft drinks, coffee and light snacks; anything else is passed through at cost plus a handling margin, often 15–25%. Order at least 24 hours ahead, longer at small airports and for dietary or religious requirements, and remember that a light jet has no galley oven, so hot food must be delivered warm. Alcohol is usually stocked on request; some Middle East operators do not carry it.
Charter broker charter
A charter broker is an intermediary who sources aircraft from certificated operators on the customer's behalf, negotiates the price and manages the trip, earning a commission or mark-up of roughly 5–15%. Brokers do not own or operate aircraft, so they cannot be audited for safety the way operators can, although some join accreditation schemes such as BACA in the UK or ACA in the US. A good broker knows which operators are reliable, has leverage on price and will tell you the operator and tail number without being asked. A poor one adds cost and hides who is actually flying you; the US DOT requires brokers to disclose the operator before you pay.
D
Daily minimum charter
A daily minimum is the smallest number of flight hours an operator will bill for each day an aircraft is committed to you, typically two hours for jets and 1.5 for turboprops. If you fly a 45-minute hop from London to Paris and keep the aircraft overnight, you will usually pay for two hours that day and two the next, even if the return is also short. Minimums exist because crew, aircraft and slots are tied up regardless of distance. They make short flights disproportionately expensive per mile and make multi-day trips with idle days cost more than newcomers expect; on longer stays it can be cheaper to release the aircraft and rebook.
Deadhead charter
Deadhead is the operational term for a leg flown without passengers, whether repositioning to pick you up, returning to base after dropping you off, or moving crew to an aircraft. It is the same phenomenon that produces empty legs, viewed from the operator's cost side rather than the sales side. Most Part 135 and AOC operators bill deadhead time at their standard hourly rate, and their crews must count it toward duty limits. When comparing quotes, ask how many deadhead hours are included; a lower hourly rate can hide more of them, and a slightly older aircraft already at your airport is often the better value.
E
Empty leg charter
An empty leg is a flight an aircraft has to make anyway with nobody on board, usually to return to base or reposition for its next paying customer. Operators sell these sectors at a discount, often 25–75% below a normal one-way quote, because any revenue beats flying empty. The catch is flexibility: the date, route and aircraft are fixed by someone else's trip, and if the original booking changes or cancels, your empty leg can vanish with little notice. Treat empty legs as a bargain for travellers with loose plans and a fallback option, not as a dependable way to make a fixed meeting or a wedding.
F
Floating fleet charter
A floating fleet is a group of aircraft that has no fixed home base: each jet simply stays wherever its last flight ended and is dispatched from there to the nearest demand. Large operators such as VistaJet, Flexjet and NetJets run floating fleets across regions, which is what makes genuine one-way pricing possible on popular routes. For the customer it means fewer repositioning charges and more availability at short notice in busy markets, but sometimes a less predictable aircraft type. Smaller operators with two or three jets at a single airport cannot float, so their quotes will usually include the return or positioning cost.
Fuel surcharge charter
A fuel surcharge is an amount added to the base hourly rate to pass on fuel costs above a reference price written into the contract. It is common in jet card and fractional contracts, where the hourly rate is fixed for years, and appears in some ad hoc charter quotes when prices spike. Surcharges are typically expressed as dollars per flight hour for each cent that jet fuel rises above a benchmark, and they can add 10–20% in a volatile year. Ask whether a quote is inclusive of fuel and, for a card, what the reference price is and how often it is reset; fixed all-in pricing is worth paying a small premium for.
J
Jet card charter
A jet card is a prepaid charter product: you deposit a sum (typically $100,000–$500,000) or buy a block of 25, 50 or 100 hours at a fixed hourly rate for a given aircraft category, and draw it down flight by flight. Cards usually promise guaranteed availability with 24–72 hours' notice, fixed rates that shield you from spot-market spikes, and no repositioning charges within a service area. The price of that certainty is a higher hourly rate than ad hoc charter, peak-day surcharges, expiry dates on unused funds and fine print about the operator's right to substitute aircraft. Cards suit people flying 25–75 hours a year on short notice; occasional flyers usually do better with ad hoc charter.
O
One-way pricing charter
One-way pricing is a charter quote that charges only for the occupied sector, with no return or repositioning cost added. Historically most charters were priced as round trips from the aircraft's base, so a single London–Ibiza flight could cost nearly as much as flying there and back. Operators with floating fleets, and brokers who chain one customer's outbound with another's return, can now offer true one-way rates on busy corridors such as New York–Florida, London–Geneva or Dubai–Riyadh. Ask explicitly whether a quote is one-way or includes a hidden return. On thin routes, one-way pricing may simply not be available and the round-trip price is what you will pay.
P
Peak day charter
Peak days are dates of very high demand on which operators and jet card programmes apply surcharges, longer notice requirements or restrictions on cancellations. Typical US peak periods are Thanksgiving week, Christmas and New Year, Presidents' Day weekend, spring break and the Fourth of July; in Europe they include Christmas, February school holidays, Easter, the Monaco Grand Prix and August in the Mediterranean; in the Gulf, Eid and the winter season. Jet cards often list 30–60 peak days a year with surcharges of 10–40% and require booking a week or more ahead. Ad hoc charter prices on those days can be double the normal rate, and aircraft may simply be unavailable.
Per-diem charter
Crew per-diem is the daily allowance for pilots and cabin crew who stay away from base during your trip, covering hotel, meals and transport. On multi-day charters it is billed either as a fixed figure per crew member per night, typically $250–$600 depending on the city, or at cost with receipts. Two pilots waiting three nights in Zurich can easily add $3,000 to a quote. The alternative is to release the aircraft after drop-off and charter a fresh one for the return, which avoids per-diem and daily minimums but exposes you to spot-market prices and availability. Ask that per-diem be shown as a line item rather than buried in a lump sum.
Positioning fees charter
Positioning fees are the charges for flying an aircraft empty to your departure airport and, if it cannot pick up another customer, back to base afterwards. They are usually billed at the same hourly rate as the occupied flight, sometimes with a modest discount, plus landing and handling for the extra sectors. On a quote, positioning may appear as separate line items, be rolled into a single all-in price, or be hidden inside a round-trip calculation. Always ask where the aircraft will start from: an operator based at your departure airport, or one with a floating fleet, can eliminate the fee, and that alone can shave 20–40% off the price.
R
Repositioning charter
Repositioning is moving an aircraft, without paying passengers, from where it is to where it needs to be for the next flight. When you charter a jet based in Geneva for a trip starting in Nice, the operator must first fly it to Nice; that flight is repositioning. Most quotes bake the cost in as a positioning fee or by pricing the trip as a round trip from the aircraft's base. For the customer, the lesson is that the aircraft's home base matters: a jet already sitting at your departure airport is almost always cheaper than a nicer one 300 miles away. Repositioning sectors are the source of most empty legs.