Buying guide

Jet card, fractional share, or charter: what you actually buy, who is in control, and the tax line

Updated October 25, 2026 · Written by the Only for the Wealthy editors · General information, not legal or financial advice

Owning a share of a jet, or holding a card that summons one, is the most coveted way to travel. It is also where the most capable buyers sign the least-read contracts. The words are used loosely, but the rules are not: a charter, a jet card, and a fractional share put different companies in charge of your flight, protect your money differently, and are taxed differently. Here is how the discerning flyer tells them apart, using the FAA’s and DOT’s own rules and the tax code.

We don’t sell, broker, or arrange flights, jet cards, or aircraft shares. Only for the Wealthy is a publisher. We don’t sell, broker, consign, or arrange the sale of any aircraft, aircraft interest, or vehicle, and we don’t act as an agent for buyers, sellers, or operators (see 625 ILCS 5/5-101). This is general information about U.S. federal rules, not legal or tax advice. Before signing a multi-year program agreement, have an aviation attorney and your tax adviser read it.

Three contracts, one cabin

From the leather seat, a charter, a jet card, and a fractional share can feel identical: the same crew greeting, the same quiet climb. On paper they are entirely different. With a charter you are a customer of a certificated air carrier. With a jet card you hold a contract for future flying, and the company that sold it may or may not be the one flying you. With a fractional share you own, or hold a multi-year lease on, part of a specific aircraft, and the federal rules make you responsible for the flights you take [7].

	On-demand charter	Jet card	Fractional share
What you buy	A specific trip	A contract for future flights, usually prepaid	An ownership interest or multi-year lease in a program aircraft [7]
Who is in operational control	The certificated operator (Part 135) [2]	The certificated operator that flies each trip [2][4]	You, as owner, on program flights, jointly responsible with the program manager [7]
What to verify	The operator’s certificate [2][3]	The seller’s role, the operators it uses, and where your money sits [4][5]	The manager’s FAA management specifications and your contract rights [7][9]
Federal ticket tax	7.5% of the amount paid, plus segment charges [6]	Same as charter for flights that are taxable transportation [6]	Fuel surtax instead of the ticket tax on qualifying program flights, through Sept. 30, 2028 [10][6]

The models are evidently winning converts. JETNET iQ’s August 2026 market barometer reported fractional ownership flight activity up 10.7% on a trailing-twelve-month basis through July, while corporate flight departments contracted 7.1%, and said program holders took 18% of new aircraft deliveries so far in 2026 [1]. Popularity is a good reason to understand what you are signing, not a reason to sign quickly.

1. On-demand charter: you are the customer

See the certificate. The FAA tells consumers to ask to see the operator’s Air Carrier or Operating Certificate to confirm the aircraft is authorized for charter, and to look elsewhere if the operator won’t show it [2]. The FAA also publishes a weekly list of legal Part 135 certificate holders [3].
Know the FAA’s red flags. Among them: a company that provides the aircraft and at least one crewmember yet tries to transfer operational control to you through any document; no federal excise tax on your invoice (legitimate operators have to charge it); no safety briefing or briefing cards; and evasive answers [2].
Our charter verification guide walks through the operator and broker checks step by step.

2. Jet cards: read who is actually flying you

“Jet card” is a marketing term. The FAA and DOT rules we read for this guide don’t define it, so the protections you get depend on who sold the card and in what capacity.

If the seller is a broker, the air charter broker rule applies. A broker’s ads and web pages must say clearly that it is a broker, not a direct air carrier in operational control, and that the flights are provided by a properly licensed carrier [4].
Disclosures before a “series of flights”. Before entering a contract for a specific flight or series of flights, a broker must tell you the corporate name of the carrier in operational control (and any other names it uses), the capacity in which the broker is acting, and whether it holds liability insurance covering you and your passengers, with its limits. On request, it must also disclose the total cost including fees and taxes, any third-party fees you’ll pay directly (fuel, landing, parking, hangar), and, if it acts as your agent, any business relationship with the carrier that may bear on its choice [4].
If the disclosures don’t come, and the information isn’t provided within a reasonable time after it becomes available, the broker must let you cancel the contract and receive a full refund of the money paid for the charter and related services [4].
Ask which operators fly card trips, then check each one the same way you would a charter [2][3].
Ask whether the hourly rate includes tax. Federal law imposes a 7.5% tax on the amount paid for taxable air transportation of a person, plus a charge per domestic segment that the statute adjusts for inflation [6]. A quote that leaves it out isn’t comparable to one that includes it, and the FAA treats a missing excise tax as a warning sign [2].

Where is your prepaid balance?

This is the question the most seasoned flyers ask first. For Public Charters, DOT requires a security agreement and depository arrangements that protect participants’ payments [5]. The broker rule we read in full contains no comparable escrow requirement for single-entity charter [4]. Unless your contract says otherwise, assume a prepaid card balance is protected only by the company’s own promises and finances, and ask:

Is the deposit held in escrow or a segregated account, and with whom? Get it in writing.
Is an unused balance refundable, on what notice, and within how many days?
What happens to your balance if the company is sold, stops selling cards, or fails?
Which fees, peak-day rules, and surcharges sit outside the hourly rate?

Paying by credit card has limits for prepaid programs. The FTC explains that a billing-error dispute for something not delivered as agreed must reach the issuer within 60 days after the first bill with the error was sent [11], so a card charge from many months before a missed flight may be outside that window. Many buyers fund large balances in stages for this reason. That is our suggestion, not a legal requirement.

3. Fractional ownership: you are the operator

Fractional programs operate under their own subpart of the FAA’s general operating rules, Part 91 Subpart K, which the FAA describes as rules for private, general aviation programs of shared aircraft ownership [8]. A program manager applies for FAA management specifications (MSpecs), not an air carrier certificate, and the FAA says a Part 91K manager “is not a certificate holder” [8].

What a real program must include

A single program manager; two or more airworthy aircraft; at least one aircraft with more than one owner; a dry-lease exchange so owners can use other program aircraft; and multi-year program agreements [7][8].
Minimum share: 1/16 of a subsonic fixed-wing or powered-lift aircraft, or 1/32 of a rotorcraft [7]. Selling or leasing a smaller interest is prohibited unless the flights tied to it are operated under Part 121 or 135 by a certificated carrier [7].
Your ownership interest can be outright ownership or a multi-year leasehold, including one convertible into ownership [7]. Ask which you are buying.
The FAA’s advisory circular says programs marketed as fractional ownership that don’t meet the regulatory definitions should not be marketed that way [9]. If the label and the paperwork disagree, believe the paperwork.

The responsibility you accept

Operational control is yours. On a program flight carrying your passengers, you are in operational control and “ultimately responsible for safe operations”. You may delegate tasks to the manager, but you and the manager are then jointly and individually responsible for compliance [7].
You will sign for it. At signing, and at each renewal or extension, the manager must brief you on your operational-control responsibilities, and you must sign an acknowledgment covering compliance, enforcement actions for noncompliance, and liability risk if a flight-related occurrence causes injury or property damage [7]. Read it as carefully as the purchase agreement.
Prefer not to carry that? The FAA’s advisory circular says an owner who doesn’t want the operational-control responsibility can decline to sign the acknowledgment and have all flights conducted under air carrier rules, if the manager also holds a Part 119 certificate for Part 121 or 135 [9].

Rights your contract must give you

The right to inspect and audit, yourself or through a designee, the manager’s records on operational safety and compliance, including the MSpecs, manuals, logbooks, and maintenance records [7].
Access to the MSpecs for review and audit. They must list the program’s owners, aircraft types, registration marks, and serial numbers, and no program flight may use an aircraft not listed [7].
Notice when a flight is operated under Part 121 or 135 instead of as a program flight [7]. A substitute aircraft that isn’t in the program must be flown under those carrier rules [7].

What you should see on every flight

Before takeoff, the pilot in command must tell passengers the name of the entity in operational control [7].
The manager must provide a written document naming that entity and the part of the rules the flight is operated under, and the pilot must carry a copy [7].
On multi-engine turbine aircraft, the pilot in command needs at least 1,500 hours and an airline transport pilot certificate with the type rating; the second in command needs at least 500 hours and commercial and instrument ratings [7].
The FAA says Part 91K operations get oversight equivalent to Part 135 carriers, except for cabin and cockpit en route inspections and line checks [9].

Hours are capped by your share

Over the term of your agreements, your flight hours on program aircraft can’t exceed the hours tied to your share [7]. The FAA’s circular says that once you exceed them, additional flights must be conducted under Part 121 or 135 unless you buy more share [9]. Ask how those flights are priced and taxed before you need them.

4. The federal tax line, in plain terms

Charter and most jet card flights: the ticket tax of 7.5% of the amount paid, plus the inflation-adjusted domestic segment charge [6].
Qualifying fractional program flights: a surtax of 14.1 cents per gallon applies to fuel used in a program aircraft to carry a qualified fractional owner (one holding at least the minimum share), including deadhead legs flown on the owner’s account [10]. When that surtax applies, the ticket tax doesn’t [6]. Both provisions currently run through September 30, 2028 [10][6].
Because the exemption follows the fuel surtax, a flight on a non-program aircraft operated under Part 135 is a different tax question. Ask your manager how each kind of flight is invoiced.
For whole-aircraft owners, amounts paid to a management company for maintenance and support of the owner’s aircraft, or for flights on it, aren’t subject to the ticket tax [6]. Your tax adviser can tell you how this applies to a particular arrangement.

5. The paperwork, step by step

Write down which of the three you are actually being offered, in the seller’s own words.
Charter or card: get the operator’s name and check its certificate [2][3]; from a broker, get the required disclosures in writing [4].
Card: ask where the prepaid money is held, what is refundable, and what happens if the company fails. Get the answers in the contract.
Card: confirm whether quotes include the 7.5% excise tax and segment charges [6].
Fractional: ask for the MSpecs and confirm your aircraft’s registration mark and serial number appear on them [7]. Look the tail number up in the FAA Registry [12].
Fractional: read the operational-control acknowledgment and the audit clause before you sign [7].
Fractional: ask how flights beyond your share’s hours, and flights on substitute aircraft, are operated, priced, and taxed [7][9].
Anyone: if a company supplies the aircraft and crew but asks you to sign a document making you the operator, and it isn’t a genuine Part 91K program, treat it as the FAA does, as a red flag [2], and report it through the FAA’s Safe Air Charter page [13].

Thinking of buying the whole aircraft instead? Read our pre-owned aircraft guide, and before any wire, our escrow and wire-fraud guide.