How to Buy a Jet

This is just one of the special reports included in Your Guide to Flying Privately, which covers all the basics you need to know to make smart decisions about charter, fractional shares, jet cards, and aircraft ownership. View the entire guide.

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You’ve chartered, jet carded, maybe owned a fractional jet share, and now your usage and finances have reached a level where whole aircraft ownership might make sense. Good timing—several next-generation business jets are about to enter service and you can find historic values on preowned aircraft in every category. But by themselves, these market conditions aren’t sufficient reasons to buy.

Purchase a jet because no other solution will accomplish what you need to do as reliably and economically; because you can’t afford to wait three hours for your fractional provider to have an aircraft available; or because, though ownership is more expensive than other private-access options, you feel its value justifies the cost.

Once you’ve determined that full ownership really does make sense for you, be sure you buy in a way that won’t leave you disappointed. Get the aircraft that best suits your needs and that meets your operational budget, and get it at a fair price. Here are the steps professionals follow (see PDF).