What does it cost to charter a private jet?

Charter is priced by the aircraft and the hour, never by the seat. Real hourly rates by class, what pushes the total up, and what actual European routes cost.

Private charter is priced per aircraft and per flight hour, never per seat. Six people flying London to Nice pay what two people flying London to Nice pay, because you are buying the aeroplane and the crew’s day rather than a row of seats. Once that is clear, the rest of the arithmetic follows — including why two quotes for what looks like the same trip can differ by thousands.

Indicative hourly rates by class

These are the figures we quote from. Treat them as starting points for a straightforward European trip; the exact number is always calculated per flight.

• Turboprop — from about €2,200 an hour. Six to eight seats, short regional sectors, and access to small airfields jets cannot use.
• Very light jet — from about €2,800. Four or five seats and roughly three hours of range.
• Light jet — from about €3,300. Five to seven seats, and most short European routes.
• Super-light jet — from about €3,500. Eight seats and around four hours, which covers most of Western Europe.
• Super-midsize jet — from about €5,800. Nine seats, a flat-floor cabin, six hours or so.
• Heavy jet — from about €7,500. Ten to fourteen seats and eight hours of range.
• Ultra-long-range — from about €11,000. Intercontinental without a fuel stop.
• VIP airliner — from about €18,000. An airline-sized cabin for a large group.

Each aircraft carries its own band inside the class. A super-light jet such as the Citation XLS+ runs roughly €3,600 to €4,900 an hour; a super-midsize Challenger 350 roughly €5,900 to €8,000. That spread is not vagueness. It is what route, season, positioning and dates do to the very same airframe, and across the fleet it comes to about 25 to 40 per cent.

Why the hourly rate is not the price

Multiply the rate by the block time and you will get a number that is too low, often badly so. What you are chartering is the aircraft’s day, not your ninety minutes of it.

Positioning

The aircraft has to reach you. If the nearest suitable jet is sitting in Munich and you are leaving from Nice, someone pays for that ferry flight, and that someone is you. This is the most common single reason two quotes for an identical route arrive thousands apart — one broker found an aircraft already on the field, the other did not.

The return the aircraft still has to make

A one-way trip often costs more than people expect, because the aircraft must still get home or on to its next booking. On a return within a day or two that cost is already inside your quote; on a one-way it is added to it. It is also precisely the mechanism that produces empty legs for the next customer — your repositioning flight is somebody else’s discount.

Crew duty and night stops

Crews work to legal duty limits. A day that starts early in London and ends late in Larnaca needs about nine hours of flying for the round trip, which is a duty problem before it is an aircraft problem: it means a second crew or a night stop, and both are charged. Any route where the round trip will not fit inside one crew day is a different price from the one the hourly rate suggests.

Airports are not equally priced, or equally open

Landing, handling and parking fees vary enormously between fields. Some airports also constrain the day itself: Geneva closes departures at 21:26, Paris–Le Bourget refuses jets over 5.7 tonnes between 22:15 and 06:00, and Ibiza wants parking confirmed roughly fifteen days ahead in season. Each of those can turn a day trip into an overnight, and an overnight has a price.

Season and event weeks

Cannes in May, Monaco for the Grand Prix, the Alps at New Year, Geneva during Davos week — for 2026 Geneva required business aviation to hold parking permission across 16 to 26 January. In those windows aircraft are scarce and the price says so. Moving a trip by four days can save more than any negotiation will.

What actual routes cost

Indicative one-way figures we publish, each for the whole aircraft rather than per seat:

• London to Paris — from about €6,400.
• London to Geneva — from about €7,600.
• London to Nice — from about €9,500.
• Geneva to Nice — from about €6,000.
• Milan to Nice — from about €5,950.
• Zurich to Nice — from about €6,600.
• Paris to Nice — from about €8,500.
• London to Milan — from about €9,150.
• London to Dubai — from about €60,500.

The jump to Dubai is the two variables compounding: around seven hours in the air, in an aircraft whose hourly rate is three times that of the one which does London to Nice in ninety minutes. Nothing exotic is happening — it is the same arithmetic at a different scale.

Four ways to pay less

• Fly an empty leg. A repositioning flight typically runs 25 to 40 per cent under the on-demand quote for the same route. What it costs you is the choice of date.
• Move the airport. Luton instead of Farnborough, Cannes–Mandelieu instead of Nice. The aircraft that is already there is cheaper than the one that has to fly to you.
• Move the hour. A departure that lets the crew finish inside one duty day, and lets the aircraft sleep at its home base, is cheaper than one that does neither.
• Right-size the aircraft. Booking a heavy jet for four people over ninety minutes is the most expensive mistake on this list and the easiest to avoid.

Jet cards and block hours

For anyone flying regularly, a jet card or block-hours arrangement fixes the rate in advance and removes the trip-by-trip negotiation. The ten-hour card is the usual entry point, and the arithmetic is worth stating plainly: ten hours on a super-light jet at our published rates is roughly €35,000 to €50,000 committed up front, depending on the aircraft and the terms.

What that buys is certainty and speed — a known rate, guaranteed availability inside the notice period, and no quoting round before each trip. What it costs is optionality: on-demand charter lets you take whichever aircraft happens to be well positioned that week, empty legs included, and a card generally cannot reach those. Which way the trade falls depends almost entirely on how many hours a year you fly. Our jet card page sets out how ours is structured, and we would rather talk you out of one than sell you a card you will not use.

Send us the route, the dates and the passenger count and we will come back with a firm all-in figure rather than a range — including whether an empty leg happens to fit your week.