A jet card is a prepaid block of private-jet flight hours, bought in bulk at a locked-in hourly rate, that entitles the holder to book on-demand charter flights without owning, leasing, or sharing title to any aircraft.
In plain terms
There is no ownership interest and no FAA minimum-share rule to clear — a jet card is closer to a prepaid retainer than a purchase. The flights themselves are operated under on-demand charter rules by whichever FAA-certificated carrier the program assigns, which is why guaranteed availability, aircraft type, and even the specific operator can vary between programs and between individual flights. It tends to suit buyers whose annual flying falls well short of the hours that make fractional ownership worth the larger commitment.
How it works
Because a jet-card flight is chartered rather than owned, each trip counts as “taxable transportation” the same way a one-off charter or a scheduled airline ticket does. 26 U.S.C. §4261(a) imposes a federal excise tax on the amount paid for domestic air transportation of persons, and a separate flat fee applies per domestic segment, both detailed in IRS Publication 510. Card programs differ in how visibly they pass this through — some fold it into the quoted hourly rate, others itemize it on the invoice — but the tax applies to the amount paid for the transportation regardless of how it is presented on the bill.
The numbers
- Federal air transportation excise tax: 7.5% of the amount paid, 26 U.S.C. §4261(a).
- Domestic segment fee, 2026: $5.30 per segment — IRS Publication 510 (Rev. 12/2025), reflecting Revenue Procedure 2025-32.
- International flights beginning or ending in the US, 2026: $23.40 per person; flights departing only Alaska or Hawaii: $11.70 per person.
- Comparison: these are the same categories of tax a scheduled commercial airline ticket carries — on-demand charter booked through a jet card is not exempt from any of them.
What people get wrong
That a jet card is the tax-efficient alternative to fractional ownership because “you’re not buying a plane.” On the tax side, the opposite is true. A fractional owner’s flying is taxed as fuel consumption — a flat 14.1 cents per gallon under 26 U.S.C. §4043 — precisely because an owner isn’t purchasing a fare. A jet-card flight is a fare, charged for an on-demand charter trip, and so it carries the full passenger-transportation tax package: the 7.5% excise tax plus the per-segment fee. The prepaid-hours structure changes how the trip is booked and billed. It does not change which federal tax regime the flight falls under.
Related
Read more: Flying Private: How the Wealthy Travel · Yachts: Ownership, Charter, and the Real Cost of Life at Sea
See also: Fractional aircraft ownership · Part 91 vs Part 135 · Empty leg