Fractional Ownership, Private Jet Ownership Or Jet Charter: Which One Is Best?

By Daniel Pott


There has been a widening rift inside the private aircraft market over how jets are bought and sold. For over twenty years, some within the market have been pushing the notion of fractional ownership as a way to get more businesses and private individuals into jet ownership. It seemed like a fantastic idea in the beginning and from the outside still sounds like a great concept.

But if you are going into a deal to own an airplane with the thought of becoming budget conscious and to save cash, then there's possibly no need for you to own a plane. Which is not a knock on any individual or business, but not all customers ought to or need to own a plane. Chartering a plane should do them just fine, and really, immediately after all of the fees and high-priced expenses, it is possibly even going to be less costly than purchasing a plane, even if it is just a piece of a plane.

The notion is great, but in actual life, with real clients and real money, it hasn't worked out as planned. It was a lot like the housing bubble that just broke in the US; many people had bought considerably much more home than their family needed, and in doing so put themselves in a lot a lot more debt than they almost certainly needed to have been. The very same might be said about fractional aircraft ownership. It puts people in the role of owning a plane that in all probability don't need to own a plane.

If it's for tax factors, you are able to write off the enterprise expenses of individual flights as well as the taxes on an airplane, so that cannot be the only reason to own a plane. If it can be for convenience, knowing that you have a plane on call to take you anywhere you'll want to go at any moment of the day, then you don't have significantly advantage over somebody that doesn't own a plane. Whilst the fleet that an owner would draw from could measure in the hundreds, the fleet accessible for charter throughout the US is in the thousands and so there will nearly be one available at any moment.

The cost to fly once a month is almost equal to the maintenance fees of owning a plane, and in the end you do not have to worry about insurance, pilots and keeping a plane in storage when you aren't flying. You also do not have to worry about an investment that loses money every day and is a huge liability when you want to finally sell it.




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