Every private jet price estimate, ours included, is a model. It takes what can be known in advance about a trip, the two airports and the aircraft size, and turns it into a range of prices. Knowing how that model works tells you how far to trust the answer, and what to check when a real quote arrives. There are four steps.
Step 1: measure the distance
Aircraft do not follow roads, so the starting point is the great-circle distance: the shortest path between two points on the surface of the earth. Each airport has a latitude and longitude, and a standard formula turns the pair into nautical miles. One nautical mile is a minute of latitude, about 1.15 statute miles.
Some familiar routes, for scale: Teterboro to Palm Beach is about 900 nautical miles, Van Nuys to Las Vegas about 200, Westchester to Aspen about 1,520 and London Luton to Nice about 580. Real flights are a little longer, because aircraft follow airways and published arrival and departure routes, which is one reason the model builds in an allowance for routing.
Step 2: turn distance into time
Charter is billed by the hour, so distance has to become time. The calculator divides the distance by a typical cruise speed for each size of aircraft, then adds a fixed 25 minutes for taxi, climb and descent. Those 25 minutes matter more than they seem: on a short hop they can be half the trip.
| Category | Cruise used | Van Nuys to Las Vegas | Teterboro to Palm Beach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turboprop | ~290 kt | about 1h 05m | about 3h 30m |
| Light jet | ~440 kt | about 50 min | about 2h 30m |
| Midsize jet | ~430 kt | about 55 min | about 2h 30m |
| Super-midsize jet | ~460 kt | about 50 min | about 2h 25m |
| Large-cabin jet | ~470 kt | about 50 min | about 2h 20m |
Two things follow. On short routes, a faster jet saves almost nothing, so the cheaper hourly rate usually wins. On long routes, speed starts to pay for itself. If a leg is longer than an aircraft can comfortably fly with reserves, the model adds a fuel stop of about 45 minutes, which is why very light jets often look slower than they are on long trips.
The calculator also keeps a high case for time. It adds 3% for routing and up to 12% more when the track heads west, where winter headwinds slow aircraft down. The westbound piece explains why.
Step 3: turn time into money
Each category has an estimated hourly range for the US market: about $3,500–5,500 for a light jet, $4,500–7,000 for a midsize, $6,500–9,500 for a super-midsize and $8,500–13,000 for a large cabin. The range exists because aircraft within a category differ in age, cabin, speed and operator. The low estimate multiplies the still-air time by the bottom of the range; the high estimate multiplies the wind-affected time by the top.
Step 4: add tax and fees
For a trip between two US airports, the 7.5% federal excise tax applies to the flight charges, and a segment fee of about $5 is due per passenger for each leg. International flights work differently, with per-passenger arrival and departure taxes and local fees, so the calculator shows those trips before tax and leaves the detail to the quote.
The whole thing, worked through
| Teterboro to Palm Beach, light jet, 4 passengers | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Great-circle distance | 902 nm | 902 nm |
| Cruise at about 440 kt | 2.05 h | 2.05 h |
| Plus 25 minutes, then winds and routing | 2h 30m | 2h 40m |
| Hourly rate | $3,500 | $5,500 |
| Flight cost | $8,630 | $14,560 |
| Federal excise tax, 7.5% | $650 | $1,090 |
| Segment fees, 4 × about $5 | $20 | $20 |
| Estimate | $9,300 | $15,700 |
The track from Teterboro to Palm Beach runs a little west of south, so the high case adds about 7% to the time. A route due east would add only the 3% for routing.
Where the model is strongest
The four steps work best on trips of one to four hours between busy airports, where aircraft are plentiful and positioning is short. There, the flight itself is most of the price, and a real quote usually lands inside the estimated range or near its upper end. On very short hops and very long ones, other lines start to dominate: minimums on the short side, and crew, overnight and international costs on the long side.
What the four steps leave out
The model knows nothing about where aircraft happen to be today, so it cannot price positioning: the flight to collect you, or the flight home after a one-way trip. It also ignores daily minimums, crew overnights, airport fees, winter de-icing and catering, and it cannot see a holiday weekend coming. Those are the lines a real quote adds, and they are the subject of Calculator vs real quote.
How to use an estimate well
- Compare sizes on the same route. The estimate is most useful as a comparison: what moving up a category costs on your trip.
- Budget with the high end. Then treat positioning as the main thing that can push a quote higher.
- Sanity-check quotes. If a quote lands far above the high estimate, ask which line explains it. There is usually a good answer, and it should be on the quote.
You can run any pair of listed airports through the route calculator, which lays out each of these steps with the real numbers for your trip.