Every line on the invoice.

Ask what a midsize jet costs and you will be told something like $5,000 an hour. Fly two hours and the invoice will not say $10,000. Here is everything else on it, in the order it usually appears.

Block time, not flight time

You are billed for block time — brakes off to brakes on — not the time in the air. That adds roughly 0.4 of an hour to every leg for taxi, climb and descent. On a 45-minute hop that is a third again on top of the flying, which is why short legs look expensive per mile and long ones look cheap.

The distance is not the great-circle distance either. Airways, departure procedures and traffic all add track miles; a planning allowance of about 6% over the straight line is standard, and it is what this site uses everywhere it prices a leg.

The daily minimum

An operator will not release an aircraft and a crew for one 40-minute leg at 40 minutes of revenue. Most contracts carry a minimum of one to two hours per day the aircraft is used — commonly 1.5 for a light or midsize jet, more for heavy metal. On a short out-and-back this is often the single largest item, and it is why the shortest trip is almost never the cheapest per hour.

Repositioning

The aircraft has to get to you. If it is based two hours away, someone pays for those two hours, and that someone is whoever is chartering it. This is invisible in a rate card and decisive in a quote — it is the main reason the same trip on the same aircraft type can differ by thousands of dollars between two operators, and the main reason an empty-leg is cheap.

Landing, handling and the FBO

Every landing carries an airport fee and a handling charge from the FBO — ramp, marshalling, baggage, the lounge you walk through. It scales with aircraft size and it varies enormously by field: the same heavy jet pays a fraction as much at a quiet reliever as it does at a fashionable resort airport in season.

Federal excise tax

Domestic US charter carries a 7.5% federal excise tax on the transportation charge, under 26 U.S.C. § 4261, plus a per-passenger segment fee for each flight segment — a figure the IRS indexes annually, currently a little over $5. FET is not the broker's margin and it is not negotiable. If a quote does not show it, ask where it went: either it is buried in the hourly rate, or the flight is being sold to you as something other than charter.

What is actually negotiable

The hourly rate, a little, if the aircraft is already positioned near you or the operator wants the return leg. Repositioning, if you can move your departure to a field the aircraft is already at. Catering and ground transport, always. Taxes and airport fees, never. Anyone offering to reduce the excise tax is describing a problem, not a discount.

Where the estimates on this site sit

Every price here includes block time with the routing allowance, the daily minimum where it binds, repositioning, landing and handling at both ends, the segment fee and FET. What it cannot include is de-icing, an overnight the trip did not anticipate, waiting time, or the surcharge every operator applies over a holiday weekend. Those are real and they are not guessable, so they are not guessed.