Private Jet: Own or Charter?

The calculator builds two annual cost models and puts them side by side. The ownership model adds up every fixed cost of keeping an aircraft: crew salaries, hangarage, insurance, management fees and depreciation. It then adds the variable costs that scale with your flying hours: fuel, maintenance reserves, landing fees, navigation charges and catering. The charter model is simpler. It multiplies your expected trips by the market hourly rate for the same aircraft category, plus positioning and peak-day premiums.

Each cost is shown as a range rather than a single number. That is deliberate. A Phenom 300 hangared at Biggin Hill costs more to base than the same aircraft in Prague. A crew of two in London costs more than a crew in Lisbon. The low end of each range reflects an efficient operation in a lower-cost European base. The high end reflects a London or Geneva operation with premium support contracts.

The assumptions behind the numbers

Purchase prices, hourly maintenance reserves and charter rates come from 2026 NBAA and Conklin & de Decker benchmarks, adjusted for UK and European operations. Fuel is priced at prevailing European Jet-A1 rates. Depreciation uses a straight-line estimate over the typical first ownership period. Insurance is modelled as a percentage of hull value. Charter-back revenue, when enabled, assumes 80 charter hours per year sold at 85% of the mid-market rate, less typical management commission. None of this is financial advice. Treat the output as a structured starting point for a conversation with an aircraft broker and a Part-M accountable manager.

A worked example

Take a super-midsize jet, a Challenger 350 class aircraft, flown 200 hours per year on mixed European and transatlantic routes. Fixed costs land between £1.1m and £1.6m once crew, hangar, insurance, management and depreciation are counted. Variable costs add roughly £700,000 to £950,000 at 200 hours. Total: around £1.8m to £2.5m per year, or £9,000 to £12,500 per flight hour. Chartering the same 200 hours at £7,000 to £9,500 per hour costs £1.4m to £1.9m. At this flying level charter usually wins. Push utilisation past roughly 280 hours, or add charter-back revenue, and ownership starts to close the gap. That is exactly the break-even curve the comparison chart draws for your own inputs.

The pattern the tool reveals is consistent. Below about 150 hours per year, chartering is almost always cheaper. Above 350 hours, ownership usually wins on pure cost. The band in between is where charter-back revenue, tax treatment and schedule control decide the answer, and where a proper analysis pays for itself many times over.